Five Times Nefertari Vivi Fell In Love
by The Storybooker
Summary: Vivi has never been the type to love quickly. Love comes slowly—oh so slowly—to her. But once it arrives, it is here to stay. AKA: Vivi has lived a long and winding road, full of heartbreak.
1. Pell

Vivi has never been the type to love quickly. Love comes slowly—oh so slowly—to her. But once it arrives, it is here to stay. The intensity may dim, and the _wanting_ may fade, but the love itself is always there, thrumming underneath everything like the comfort that it is.

Pell is her first crush, and he's the only one that she can never quite remember falling for. By the time she becomes aware of love, Pell is already the center of her world. Love means Pell, and Pell means love. There is no other. She already knows that the affection she feels for him is different from Father, or Igaram or Chaka.

She is three years old when she declares her intent to marry Pell when she grows up, and Igaram has to hold her father back from going after Pell.

Years later, people will continue to tell the story and laugh.

"You were three, you didn't even understand what that meant!" Pell will tell her himself.

Vivi will smile and laugh with him, keeping her secret: that she remembers being in love with him, and perhaps it was a naive, childish sort of love, but it was love.

Vivi is four years old and on Pell's back in the sky when she dares to ask for the first time.

"Will you kiss me, Pell?"

She can't see his face, but she feels the stiffening, then the chuckle reverberating beneath her.

"If you like, Princess Vivi. When we land."

She has to remind him after they land. He kisses her on the cheek. Four-year-old Vivi cannot imagine a greater joy. Vivi cherishes that memory for the rest of her life. It is branded into the story of her life as her First Kiss.

By the time that she is five, she has learned about status and responsibility and respect. She knows that she cannot solicit more affection from Pell than he offers freely. She apologizes for the time that she made him kiss her.

His eyes go soft. "It's nothing to apologize for, Princess Vivi," he says. "The love I bear for you and your father is true."

She understands then, in her young heart, that this enormous affection she feels for Pell will never be returned. She is only a princess to him. Beloved, yes, but not the way that he is beloved to her.

Vivi's heart breaks for the first time, then. She claims a headache and takes to bed and cries for the rest of the day.

Mrs. Terracotta comes in at dinner time with soup. The soup gets haphazardly deposited on the bedside table when she sees Vivi's shoulders shaking.

"Princess? What is it?"

"It hurts," Vivi whimpers to her own shame, too deep in the ravine of heartbreak to say anything but the truth.

"Oh, sweetheart," said Mrs. Terracotta, stroking Vivi's hair. "I know it does. Just wait a minute—I'll get the doctor."

And Vivi is ashamed that her secret is out, but grateful that she is understood. The doctor gives Vivi a spoonful of a sweet syrup, and soon after that she's asleep.

It's years before it occurs to Vivi that Mrs. Terracotta didn't understand at all—she only thought she was dealing with a child with a nasty headache.

Vivi's secret is safe.

* * *

Vivi meets Kohza when she is five, and still desperately and hopelessly in love with Pell. Kohza is nothing but a nuisance to her—a kid who dares speak to Father like he understands better than Father how to be a king. He's rude and mean, and doesn't care that she's a princess when she tells him so.

In all fairness, he doesn't start the fight—but neither does she. Carue pecks him in the stomach, and he lashes out at Carue. She steps in the way. He punches her in the face. She kicks him in the groin, like Pell taught her. War is waged.

After a few fights, there's a sort of respect that underlies the fights. They avoid each other's faces, and don't punch more than they have to. Kohza takes her to his Suna Suna Clan, and accepts when she immediately challenges him for leadership.

She loses. He appoints her vice-leader all the same.

They are friends.

Vivi has never had friends her own age before. It's different. She likes it.

Everyone expects her to fall in love with Kohza.

She doesn't. She still watches Pell when she thinks no one's looking, her heart beating affection and pain in silent tandem.

Kohza becomes the first one to notice, when she's seven.

"You really love him, huh?" he says quietly, subdued.

Vivi jumps, not having noticed him coming up from behind her.

"Who?" she attempts to obfuscate. It doesn't work. Kohza just fixes her with a look. She sighs and looks away. "Aren't you supposed to be seeking us?"

"I am. I just found you. But you were too engrossed to notice."

Vivi scowls at him.

"If you think I'll let you make fun of me-"

"Never," says Kohza quietly.

Vivi furrows her brows. "You make fun of me all the time," she points out.

"But not about this. I wouldn't."

Vivi blinks at him and thinks about how she thought that Mrs. Terracotta understood her all those years ago. This is infinitely better, because she thinks Kohza really does understand.

"It hurts sometimes and I can barely breathe," she confides in a whisper. "But I can't tell him. I can't let them see. It would hurt him, if he knew. People would hurt him, blame him."

A tear trickles out the corner of her eye, and she wipes it away furiously.

"Hey," says Kohza quietly. "You can cry if you want. I won't tell."

She looks at him for the first time, and thinks she sees something like her own pain reflected in his eyes. Her lip quivers, and a half-sob escapes out her nose like a grunt. Kohza doesn't laugh. He opens his arms to her, and even though they've never done this, even though this isn't them, she dives into his arms as if it is. She cries her heart out, for the first time, face buried in Kohza's shoulder.

She thinks she's imagining the wetness she feels in her hair, but when they pull apart, his eyes are red, too.

"Thank you," she says quietly.

"Anytime," he replies.

She wonders what made him cry with her, but she senses that he fears the question, so she doesn't ask.

"You don't have to tell me anything you don't want to," she says instead.

He stares at her for a moment.

"Can I kiss you?" asks Kohza out of the blue.

Vivi furrows her brow. "Why?"

"Because I'm not him," he says.

Vivi isn't sure what that means, but she agrees anyway.

Kohza leans in and kisses her on the mouth, instead of the cheek like she was expecting. It's a quick, dry pressure that's gone as soon as it came.

Kohza's face is red when they part.

Vivi realizes, then, that maybe she just broke a heart, too, and wishes she hadn't. She throws her arms around his neck and starts crying all over again.

Kohza holds her and cries some more, too.

It's a long time before they leave the dark alcove where Vivi had been hiding. The Suna Suna Clan is no longer hiding—they've gotten bored and are playing tag at the base instead. When they return, Vivi and Kohza are met with demands for an explanation. They lie. Vivi pretends she fell asleep and Kohza pretends he got lost in a secret passageway. Vivi leads them to one of the secret passageways she knows to corroborate his story.

They never talk about that day again.

But it's a brand on Vivi's heart, and after that day, she feels the hurt and the intensity of her feelings for Pell begin to ease.


	2. Kohza

Kohza and Uncle Toto leave for Yuba when Vivi is seven, and she _sees_ Chaka, Pell, Igaram and Father all watching her like three hawks and a falcon. They expect to see heartbreak and loneliness, she knows. They still expect to see her fall in love with Kohza, if she hasn't already. When the heartbreak doesn't come, she overhears Pell insisting to Igaram that Vivi is far too young for such emotions.

Pell doesn't quite hold all her heart the way he used to. It stings all the same.

She considers marching out into the hallway to confront them, but decides that it would be un-princess-like.

Instead, she goes into her room and composes a letter to Kohza. She doesn't mention what people expect her to feel, or how she doesn't feel it. She doesn't mention the overheard conversation. She shares some offhand comments people made throughout the day, and tells Kohza that she's being diligent in her lessons. He told her to become a brilliant princess, after all. She tells him she misses him, and asks him to share some of his life with her.

It's a week before she gets a response. Kohza tells her that they've already built the community center. He's enclosed a picture. It's only a tent, really—a big tarp held up by posts inside, nailed down on the outside. It's a temporary trading place and accommodation for anyone traveling through, while they build a proper community center. There are a lot of people in the picture, and a few buildings in the background, shabby though they seem.

It's a surprise. Vivi had imagined that Kohza and Uncle Toto were going to an oasis in the wilderness to make a city out of nothing. But there are already buildings, and people. She feels stupid and young, but she's been taught well: she knows to push aside the shame, and to see this as a chance to enrich herself.

Vivi responds with a two-page letter that is filled with questions about the people and the buildings and what, specifically, Kohza and his father are planning to do there.

It's only after she sends it that she realizes that she forgot to include anything about herself. When a week comes and goes with no letter from Kohza, she wonders if she's offended him. She refrains from writing to him again—he might be too busy, and she doesn't want to bother him.

But her worries are for nothing. Two weeks after her letter, he sends her back a thick envelope containing twenty pages about the people and the buildings and Uncle Toto's plan, and a handful of photos of various people and places mentioned in his letter.

Vivi has more questions, so she sends another question-filled letter.

This time, the response comes within three days, and is short.

 _To Vivi,_

 _Why don't you come visit and see for yourself?_

 _Don't think I haven't noticed that you haven't been telling me anything about yourself. Have you been slacking?_

 _From Kohza_

Vivi asks Father for permission to go and visit Yuba. Father refuses. He doesn't have time to leave Alubarna, and he won't let her go alone.

So Vivi begs Pell to take her, instead. he refuses, too.

The letters continue. Kohza updates her on the progress of Yuba, and Vivi updates Kohza on her progress trying to get someone to let her go to Yuba. Kohza occasionally reminds her that she has other responsibilities to focus on, and she retorts that she knows, and sends him comments about her lessons.

It takes her three months to wear someone down. Eventually, it's her tutor who snaps and demands that Igaram give her some concession. Igaram talks to Father, and next thing she knows, she's being allowed a daytrip to Yuba on Pell's back.

"I'll have to fly too fast for her to hold on," Pell protests, and so a harness is built to secure Vivi on his back.

They take a test flight over Alubarna and the desert to the north. Vivi knows that at least half of her guardians are hoping that she'll be winded after this and they'll be able to dissuade her from the trip to Alubarna.

So when they return, she makes sure that she's laughing, the lightheadedness well-hidden beneath careful, measured movements.

Pell notices anyway, and Vivi reflects fondly that her younger self had excellent taste.

When they reach Yuba six months after Kohza's letter inviting her there, Kohza comes running out to greet them before Pell has even landed.

He unbuckles Vivi without being instructed to, and then she's being enveloped in a hug so tight that she doesn't need to pretend she can stand. She can lean on Kohza and hug him back.

Kohza leads her by the hand around the town, showing her everything from buildings to people to plants. Everything and everyone seems to have a story, and Kohza knows every single one. People respect him, too. They greet her politely, offering the respect that's supposed to be the due of a princess, but they greet Kohza with just as much respect, and more friendliness and trust.

Used to the familiarity and friendliness of the citizens of Alubarna, this comes as a shock to Vivi. Then the shock goes and she simply feels ashamed.

Vivi looks at Kohza and realizes for the first time that he is more than she has ever been. She was born into a position meant to command respect. Kohza has earned it, and continues to earn it through his actions each and every day.

She has lunch with Kohza's parents, and it's almost like old times—except Vivi's now acutely aware that this family is more respected in this town than hers. There's no resentment in the awareness. Just a new-found humility, and shame that she didn't realize it before.

All too soon, the day is over.

"I'll try to be a princess worthy of your respect," Vivi says earnestly to Kohza as they spend their last moments together in the shadows while Pell bids farewell to Kohza's parents.

Kohza furrows his brow at her. "You'll do more than try," he says with a conviction that she doesn't feel.

Pell comes over to them and tells her it's time to go. He seems amused. Kohza blushes and yanks his hand away, and oh—Vivi hadn't even realized they were holding hands. She looks at Kohza carefully, and hopes that she hasn't broken his heart again.

He looks happy under the blush and the gruffness that she knows is fake. Vivi's heart sinks, because this is only the prelude to another heartbreak, but there's no time to warn him now. She's strapped onto Pell's back, and soon Kohza is once again half a kingdom away.

After that trip goes without incident, Father relents and agrees that Vivi can visit Yuba once every six months.

This only lasts two years. When the kingdom is plunged into drought, everything changes, and Vivi's permission to move about freely is the first thing to go. Instead, her self-defense lessons have tripled.

It doesn't matter, anyway. Kohza's letters implore her to stay in Alubarna, too.

 _At least you have water, there,_ says one letter, and it breaks Vivi's heart.

 _I'd bring you all our water if I could_ , she writes one day when she's almost twelve without thinking about it.

Kohza's response is scathing when it arrives. He admonishes her for thinking only of herself and her friends. Everyone in Alabasta deserves equal love and care from her, he points out. Kohza lives in an oasis and no one is dying of thirst, yet. How could she say a thing like that, when so many people have it worse?

Once again, Vivi is reminded that Kohza may be better suited to serve her country than she.

But she also knew all of that. None of that was news to her. Why would she say a thing like that?

Vivi's heart sinks into her stomach as it strikes her how these emotions have crept up on her, so slowly that she didn't even notice until they were overpowering her better judgement. She doesn't know what to do, and so she stops writing to Kohza. He waits a month, and sends another letter apologizing for the way he wrote to her. When she doesn't respond, another letter comes a month after that. After that, the letters become more frequent and urgent for a time, and then they stop completely.

Mostly Vivi tries not to think about it. She fails, but pretends she's succeeding. If anyone notices that she's perhaps eating less than she used to, then no one says anything. For this, she is grateful.

The years continue to pass, and the memory of Kohza fades. He's still a little boy of ten in her memory, and she's thirteen with almost-monthly bloody underwear and tender developing breasts. There's little left to hold onto, she tells herself. But it doesn't feel quite true.

But then Father is framed for dance powder, and she knows that there's little hope left. Not for her heart—for her family, and her life. The people are turning on them, and someone is trying to make that happen. She has to do something.

She doesn't know what she can do—there doesn't seem to be anything. Vivi despairs, and reflects that Kohza would know what to do. She almost writes to him, but feels certain that it's too late, now.

She's fourteen when Igaram comes to her with a lead. It's not much—just whispers of a secret society—but it's more than they've had so far, and she pounces. She strong-arms Igaram into agreeing to a plan to infiltrate the secret society.

"Take me to Yuba," Vivi says to Pell. His face is all sympathy, and he still inspires such affection—but right now, frustration is stronger.

"I can't, Princess," he says gently. "It isn't safe for you there."

"Kohza will protect me," she says with conviction.

"Will he?" asks Pell lightly, and it _hurts_ because he's right.

So Vivi finds her own way to Yuba.

The night that she and Igaram leave, she tells him to meet her at Erumalu in five days with a ship. When it looks like he might refuse, she tells him that it's to throw off any pursuers. Igaram can lay the groundwork for a fake trail in the week that she'll be gone.

"But it's not safe for you alone," protests Igaram.

"Igaram," says Vivi patiently, "How do you expect to infiltrate this secret society of enemies if you can't trust me to make it through my own kingdom alone?"

And he is forced to relent.

Vivi pretends her monthly blood has come early this month. She has terrible cramps and doesn't eat for the first two days of any given cycle, so no one will disturb her for those two days if they know that she has an adequate supply of water. She makes a show of taking two days' worth of water to her room through the fake cramps.

When her maids leave her alone, packs up the water and some food she smuggled out the previous day, and leads Carue out of the palace through one of the secret passageways.

Then she books it out of Alubarna under the cover of night, and makes for Sandora River. She knows that there are ferries for hire in places, so when she hits the river, she heads south along the shore until she finds a ferry.

She pays for their crossing in the early hours of the morning, and lets Carue nap during the crossing. Vivi forces herself to stay awake. She _must_ remain vigilant.

When they reach the far shore, Vivi ends up napping on Carue's back, trusting the duck to take her southwards.

Carue manages to get her to Yuba just after sunset. Vivi is exhausted and dehydrated to the point of deliriousness. Most of their water she gave to Carue, who had to run all night and all day.

Yuba looks nothing like how she remembers. There are more buildings, and less water. The whole place is covered in sand, like it's just recently been ravaged by a sandstorm.

Vivi leaves Carue in the outskirts of the town with the rest of the food and water, knowing that the duck is too easily recognized. She slips into town with her hood over her face.

As she walks through the streets, she notes the homeless, the starving, the thirsty, and feels ashamed.

A hand catches her wrist and pulls her into the shadows. She instinctively elbows her assailant in the solar plexus, and spins around to deliver a knee to the groin—and she freezes.

He's taller—taller than she is, now—and handsomer, and more tanned. Their eyes meet. She lowers her knee and they stare at each other.

"What are you _doing_ here?" whispers Kohza urgently, holding her by the elbows. Even his voice is different, so much deeper than it was. "You _know_ that this is the rebel base, don't you? If anyone finds out you're here-"

"I heard that you were one of their leaders," Vivi whispers back.

"Then what possessed you to _come_ here?"

"You'd never hurt me. And I wanted to see you, one last time." She would want to bite her tongue for phrasing it like that, but she can't help it.

"What do you mean, one last…?" Kohza trails off when Vivi reaches up to trace a finger over the scar above his eye. He stands staring at her as she runs her hand over his cheeks and into his hair.

"Do you remember how things used to be?" she whispers. The emotions flutter across Kohza's face.

"I could never forget," he says at last, and leans down to rest his forehead on hers, eyes closed as if to shut out reality. His hands trail up from her elbows to her shoulders, then up her neck to cup her face. His fingers run through her hair.

"Can I kiss you?" she whispers.

" _Vivi_ ," says Kohza, and he sounds broken.

Vivi closes her eyes against the hurt, and tries to pull away.

Kohza lunges forward and kisses her with such force that their teeth clack together, their lips caught in between. There's a taste of blood, and Vivi can't tell which of their mouths it's coming from.

It's not like when they were children. That innocent childhood kiss was, surprisingly, the more graceful kiss. This one is all pain and confusion and hopelessness in an uncoordinated mess.

When Kohza starts pulling away, Vivi pulls Kohza's mouth back down to hers and wonders how she could have ever imagined that she would get over this.

It's gentler, this time. He tilts his head and runs his tongue over her bottom lip. Her mouth is already open, and she reaches out her tongue to do the same to him. His tongue meets hers in the middle, and then beckons hers into his mouth, where he sucks it—and pulls away, his mouth making a lewd noice as it releases her tongue.

"You're good at that," Vivi says through a daze.

"I've had nearly nine years to think about it," he retorts.

Vivi's face goes red. She can feel the heat rising in the almost nonexistent gap between them.

"Kohza," Vivi whispers, calling him by name instead of as _Leader_ for the first time. She feels a shudder run through him. "Whatever happens from here, I want you to remember—I love you."

He freezes, wide-eyed. Then his eyes narrow and he pushes her away.

"Why would you say that to me now?" he demands. "What am I supposed to think this is? Are you trying to get me to leave the rebels, because-"

Vivi's heart clenches.

"No," she lies. Kohza knows her too well. His face closes off, and Vivi backtracks. "I mean—I do think it would be nice if you could trust us-"

"Why do you lump yourself in with them?" Kohza demands. "You don't have to. You're a teenager, and they shield you like you're ten years younger than you are. You could leave. You could join us."

"I trust Father," says Vivi simply. "I know him, and he wouldn't do the things he's being accused of."

Anger flashes across Kohza's face.

"Fine, then. I guess this is-"

As he moves to leave, Vivi catches him by the wrist.

"Kohza, please. Can we just…be us? For a little while longer?"

"This _is_ us," Kohza sighs, but he comes back to her. His arms wind around her waist and her shoulders. His mouth meets hers.

There's no tongue this time, just lips, and occasionally teeth.

"Is this supposed to be goodbye?" Kohza asks at last, his voice cracking.

"I don't know." Vivi takes a deep breath. "I want to have a piece of you with me forever. So that whatever happens from here, I always remember that we had this, once."

Kohza pulls away, frowning. "What, like a trinket? I don't think I have anything…"

Vivi puts a hand at the side of his jaw, fingertips caressing the side of his neck. She feels him swallow. His pulse is racing under her fingertips.

"I mean, I want you to be my first."

Kohza's heart skips a beat—she feels the stutter under her fingers—and his face goes very, very red.

"But we're only—but _Vivi_ ," he protests, but doesn't continue.

"But what?" she prompts, challenging, and emotions dance across his face. They settle on determination.

"Fine," he says, and dives back in.

And it's so ridiculous, he's so damn serious and he doesn't even know what Vivi is setting out to do. Vivi can't help the giggle that escapes her.

He jerks back like she's burned him. His face is redder than she's ever seen it.

"What?" he snaps.

Vivi shakes her head, laughing.

"If this is your idea of a joke—"

She doesn't know what makes him stop. It's certainly not her—she's still laughing uncontrollably. She only realizes she's crying when Kohza cups her face and wipes the tears away with the pads of his thumbs.

"We can leave other memories on each other, you know," he says quietly. "It doesn't have to be this."

"No," says Vivi emphatically, tears running down her face as horrible scenarios run through her head. "No, Kohza—what people might do to me. I want to know that you came first."

She sees the terror flash through his eyes.

"What are you expecting to—Vivi, you have to know, the rebels would never-"

" _You_ would never!" says Vivi. "There are hundreds of thousands, millions of people angry and-"

"I'm not having sex with you because you're worried you might be _raped!_ " declares Kohza, eyes wide and frightened. "I'm not—Vivi, there are any number of things you could do to protect yourself. This—don't turn this into some sort of…preemptive bandaid!"

"That's not what I mean," says Vivi, though she's not sure if it's true. "I mean that I want you to be first. Even if no one else ever touches me, even if the rain comes and the rebellion ends and I marry someone who's not too bad, I still want to know that we had this. That for a little, tiny instant in time, I was yours and you were mine."

Her words don't seem to convince him, so she leans up to him, peppering his cheeks, nose, neck and chin with kisses before returning to his mouth. They kiss and kiss and kiss, and they pull each other tighter and tighter, until it hurts Vivi and she knows it must be hurting him, too.

Vivi doesn't lose her virginity in an alleyway. Kohza takes her to an abandoned house at the edge of town. There's a bed, with sheets and blankets and everything.

Kohza keeps on asking if she's _really_ sure, and eventually Vivi gets sick of saying yes and just pounces on him, wrapping her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck. He staggers back, but stops asking.

In most ways, it's probably awful. Kohza is still getting used to his new height, and keeps misjudging his weight on top of Vivi, or kicking her by accident. They have trouble figuring out how the diaphragm works, and after several painful attempts, they give up and figure that Kohza can just pull out. Between all the awkwardness and logistics, Vivi can't get very wet. Kohza tries to help, but ends up rubbing all the wrong places, just making her feel sore. Eventually, Vivi gives up and lies and says she's ready. Kohza believes her, and she tries to hide the pain from him as he pushes in.

He sees, but seems to accept the pain as a natural part of the process. Vivi is fine with that.

He comes almost immediately upon sheathing himself inside her, and can't pull out quite fast enough.

They lie next to each other afterwards in silence. Vivi is grateful that the awkwardness is over. The pain is still there, an ache inside of her reminding her that this is real. She's grateful for it. She reflects coolly that she will need to monitor her monthly cycle for the next month. Maybe she can get some medication in Erumalu, just to be sure.

"Can we stay the night together?" she whispers at last. "Just this once."

Kohza looks at her like she's hung the moon and stars, and draws her into his arms.

It starts out a little awkward, but they find a way it works, on their sides with his arm under her head and her forehead buried in his chest with enough space so she can breathe, and his other arm lightly over her shoulder, fingers running lightly up and down her back.

This part is perfect, and Vivi has no regrets.

They sleep more fitfully than usual. In the morning, Vivi slips out of bed while Kohza is still asleep to replenish her water. She doesn't feel different, she notes with some disappointment. Today, someone will notice that she is missing back in Alubarna. She needs to be far away from Yuba by the time that happens. She tries not to think about what Kohza will think, when he realizes that she came to him on her way out of the country. She tries not to think of how that knowledge will taint their night together. She crawls back into bed and curls herself back into his arms and waits for him to wake up.

They don't kiss or even touch after Kohza wakes up. He looks at her, and pulls away silently to get out of bed. She follows. They stand just barely apart, and Vivi feels the energy crackling between them—awareness that if they touch again, she might lose more of herself here in this place than she already has. She wonders if he feels it too.

"Go," he says instead of goodbye. Vivi nods, and goes.

Her monthly blood starts two days later, just before she reaches Erumalu. The ache inside her is already gone, and the bruises on her collar bone are already fading. She tells herself she's relieved. But perhaps there was a part of her—a tiny, irrational part that doesn't care that she's only fourteen and the princess of an angry country on the edge of rebellion—that wanted the thing that would irrevocably tie her and Kohza together. A thing that would mean that Igaram would turn the ship around, drag her back to Alubarna and maybe even make her and Kohza marry each other.

It's irrational. It wouldn't solve anything. It would only make things worse, and Kohza would resent her for the rest of their lives.

She is relieved, she tells herself again, but it feels like a lie.

A week later, on a ship to who-even-knows-where, she finds that the bruises have healed completely. She falls to her knees and weeps.


	3. Mr 9

Vivi and Igaram go to Jaya. There's plenty of rough-housing to be found there, and they each make names for themselves by beating up an appropriate number of people. They pretend to be casual acquaintances with very little investment in each other's well-being. Vivi goes by Nefertiti. Igaram goes by Igarappoi.

Igaram would prefer Vivi pretend to be his partner or daughter or anything, so he would have an excuse to protect her. Vivi has to put her foot down and remind him that their aim is to _both_ infiltrate this _Baroque Works_. She has no doubt that sugarbabies will not be welcome, and she says so.

Igaram flushes and demands where she learned that word, but Vivi simply fixes him with a look.

"We're doing this," she says. "And we're going all-in."

All the same, Igaram insists that he be her first "opponent." Vivi rolls her eyes and agrees. He takes it easy on her—Vivi's weapons of choice are best at close range, and Igaram specializes in range attacks, so on an even playing field, she would have been at a disadvantage. But Igaram shoots wide when she's at a distance, allowing her up close. Once they're at close range, the advantage is hers and she is ruthless. Her blades slice through Igaram's left arm.

She doesn't wince. That night, she sneaks into Igaram's room to help him tend to the wound. It's shallower than it looks—she knows it is. She aimed to make it so. She apologizes, but she doesn't cry. She's not even trying—her eyes are completely dry. Igaram forgives her, because this was the plan all along.

That night, Vivi lies in bed and wonders if it was the decision to infiltrate this organization, or the way that she used Kohza that has made her so heartless. Even the thought of Kohza leaves her cold.

By now he's well aware that she's gone—that she stopped by on her way out. She imagines that he thinks her a coward—thinks that she abandoned her people for personal safety. What else could he be expected to think? His trust in her family had already been worn and tired. It's too much to expect him to give her the benefit of the doubt.

And Vivi doesn't care. She has no regrets. If they can infiltrate this organization, it will all be worth it, because her people are all that matter. She took what she needed from Kohza for closure, and for strength. _She has no regrets_.

Yet she's gone cold and hard almost overnight. A corner of her mind whispers that it's proof that somewhere in her twisted mind, her humanity is still there—grieving.

It's a corner that would have dominated, before. Now, she can snuff it out like a candle.

The night is short, and morning will bring another battle. This is the thought that lulls Vivi to sleep with a smile on her face.

* * *

Nefertiti and Igarappoi make Jaya their terf for four months. By then, the locals are used to giving them a wide berth. They're reasonably well-known bounty hunters, though not the sort that make pirates go pale—not yet.

They receive any number of solicitations to join various bounty hunter groups. Some are extended only to Nefertiti; some only to Igarappoi. Igaram vets every one of these solicitations, but none of them appear to be the fabled Baroque Works.

When the solicitation from Baroque Works does arrive, that name is not used. They are both invited to join something called the Millions. The invitation is delivered by an otter and a vulture, on beautiful hand-crafted paper that reminds Vivi of home. There is a faint monogram in the back—a faint, barely-there _BW_.

Igaram vets them as usual, but he doesn't have to. They know that this is it. They cannot miss this chance—and they must also not seem too eager.

"What's in it for us?" Vivi demands of the otter and vulture, sultry and condescending as has become Nefertiti's persona. She doesn't expect an answer. But the otter pulls out a sketchbook and a pencil.

The otter draws a pile of coins: _Money_.

Then it flips the page and draws a flexed arm with bulging muscles, and a crown above it: _Power_.

Then it flips the page and draws a question mark.

For a moment, Vivi thinks this is a demand for an answer—then she realizes that this is another answer: _Mystery_.

"Money, power and mystery?" she drawls. "And why should we believe you?"

The otter only fixes her with an unsettling stare. Igaram clears his throat.

"Now, now, Nefertiti—it's not a bad offer."

Vivi narrows her eyes at him.

"Make your own decisions, Igarappoi, because I'll be making mine."

The otter and the vulture tire of the back and forth, and the otter jumps onto the vulture's back.

"Wait!" calls Igaram, but they fly off without a backward glance.

They think that they've missed their chance, and are seriously trying to come up with a plan B, fake identities almost forgotten, when Mr. 12 and Miss Saturday show up. It's only through dumb luck that they're not discovered then and there—Mr. 12 and Miss Saturday surprise Igaram in his bedroom by appearing through the window, and he barely holds it together as is.

Fortunately, Igaram is quick-witted, especially when Vivi is not involved, and Igarappoi's shock is not easily distinguished from Igaram's.

By the time that Vivi returns, negotiations are in full swing Vivi has her arms full of groceries, so she's forced to kicked open the door.

It works out for the best. She has a stuttering moment of shock, but quickly assumes the role of Nefertiti, and plays her intrusion like she has a bone to pick with Igarappoi.

Vivi pretends to nearly come to blows with Miss Saturday, but she's not quite sure if she's pretending anymore. The energy is buzzing under her skin and she knows that she could kill if she had to.

These are the people who ruined her people, her country, her life.

But she folds that hatred into her cool exterior, withdraws the blades spinning on her pinkies, and agrees to join their group.

"I was getting bored of Jaya anyway," she says.

Vivi and Igaram keep the names Nefertiti and Igarappoi, only now they must call each other Miss and Mister respectively.

They don't need to talk to reaffirm that they both understand that they _are_ their code names from here on out.

* * *

Despite the distance that Vivi and Igaram act out between their personas, they are still given separate assignments. They are both informed that they will meet their partners.

 _You will always act in pairs_ , a letter informs them that is delivered by the otter and vulture, who are apparently known as the Unluckies.

Vivi knows, then, that the time for superficiality is gone. She must become Nefertiti—she must never let her partner guess that there' anything to see beneath the mask.

Vivi meets her partner in a bar on a little autumn island as directed. Mr. King is young—maybe her age, maybe a year or two older—wears a gaudy fake crown and wields two bats. He is loud and abrasive and utterly self-involved. He claims to be interested in the power and the money more than the intrigue. But he's also awfully childish, lighthearted and comical in a way that Vivi never expected to see again. There are moments in that first meeting when she's not even sure he takes this seriously.

For some reason that she cannot explain, the tightly-wound knot in her chest comes undone. It's almost like she likes him.

But she's not quite sure if the one who likes him is Vivi or Nefertiti. She's not sure if there's really a difference, anymore. She only has to remember not to trust him, she tells himself.

There is no time to get to know each other. The boss is plunging them straight into a mission: they're supposed to take out a pirate crew worth five million in total and collect the bounties.

The number is chilling, but the crew is over a hundred strong; eleven members have bounties. The captain is only worth 1.5 million.

"I can lure the captain somewhere dark and hypnotize him," says Vivi.

"Don't tell me that you never learned the first rule of bounty hunting," says Mr. King, but his grin is teasing like he's sharing a joke with her, rather than making fun.

"What, eliminate enemies by starting with the weak?" Vivi quotes casually. "But the captain runs a tight ship. We need him out of the way first."

Mr. King blinks at her. "Of course."

"Even without him, we can't take on the entire crew. It would be best if you could find a way to get the bounty heads to leave the ship."

"Leave that to me," grins Mr. King.

Vivi flirts with the captain from the docks until he invites her onboard. She doesn't have to do anything but stand there and wait. She lets him kiss her and wrap his arm around her waist possessively, and tells herself that she doesn't feel her skin crawl. The captain pulls her into the hold, where she pretends to start stripping and hypnotizes him instead. She ties him up securely, and gags him. There's a navy headquarters on an island less than a day away. It's not too soon to gift wrap him.

When she emerges, Mr. King has already taken out all the other bounty heads, and is taking on the rest of the crew single-handedly. His relief is palpable when Vivi appears. She doesn't dive into the fray. She pulls herself up to stand on the upper deck, and shouts down at the fray on the lower deck to get the crew's attention.

She dances. The two dozen or so pirates who were watching her are paralyzed. At last, she slips her pinkies into the strings of her blades, and fells them all in under a minute, as well as a few that weren't paralyzed.

After that, she and Mr. King have no trouble finishing the rest. He's used her distraction well, and there are only about another two dozen left anyway. They fight back to back for the minute or so that it takes for them to finish the job.

"You were supposed to wait for me," Vivi frowns.

"He was pawing at you," frowns Mr. King. "I was worried that you might be in trouble."

"I'm not yours to protect," snaps Vivi. "I can take care of myself, and I'll thank you not to act like you have any say in how I use my body."

"Of course," says Mr. King, looking chastised and yet somewhat confused. "I wasn't—I mean, I was worried because you're my partner, Miss Nefertiti. I'll be sure to have more faith in you in the future."

There's something relieving and terrifying about that response. Vivi nods and doesn't let it show.

It's only after that assignment that he meets Carue. To Vivi's distress, they seem to get along.

They deliver their captives to the marine base and collect the five million. Within half a day, they have their next assignment.

On their fifth assignment, Mr. King picks a fight with a deceptively small man outside a shop that they're supposed to rob. It's only supposed to be a distraction. Vivi nearly doesn't notice from her place cutting a hole in the window on the far side of the shop. She makes it back in the nick of time to fell the man from behind and bandage Mr. King to prevent him bleeding out. Vivi uses the crowd calling an ambulance as the distraction she needed to finish the job all the same. She's worried that she might have to break Mr. King out of the hospital as well, but he does that himself after his wounds have been treated.

Vivi kisses him on the cheek when he turns up to their ship. It could be passed off as for show, but there aren't that many people around, and Vivi is just overwhelmingly relieved. Because she doesn't have to break him out of the hospital, she tells herself, or because she doesn't have to go through the whole business of getting to know a new partner. Mr. King seems somewhat red, but that might just be the light.

On their eighth assignment, Vivi finally makes a crucial mistake. She lures an assassination target—a wealthy businessman who makes his living by bribing the mayor and the navy—into an alleyway with the promise of kisses, planning to dance him in to paralysis. She does this, but doesn't notice that the man has a whole team of bodyguards, two of whom are behind her until it's too late.

One has her in a headlock, the other rushes to check on the man. He's fine, of course, but the paralysis is already wearing off and Vivi is trapped.

Mr. King sweeps in, the tips of one of his bats extended with the rope already wrapping around the loose arm of the bodyguard that has Vivi in a headlock. Mr. King yanks, and the man is pulled back. It's a moment's opportunity, and Vivi seizes it and slips out of his hold, stomping on his foot and pulling out a blade to slice the hand that's reaching for her once again.

She leaves him to Mr. King, then, and goes after the other bodyguard who's trying to get her target to safety. It doesn't take long—his back is to her, and her blades are extendable.

The job isn't perfectly executed—the bodyguards are left in a bloody mess, though the target is still dead of the poison as assigned—but they don't fail.

Mr. King says nothing when Vivi vomits afterwards. His eyes are sympathetic, but not pitying. She can't bring herself to look at him all afternoon all the same.

"Thank you," Vivi says quietly to Mr. King that evening, when she finally manages to push everything down into the corner of her mind.

"Of course," says Mr. King. "You're my partner."

And he smiles. Vivi can't help but smile back.

By their tenth job, they are perfectly in sync. They know each other's blind spots. They know how to play off each other. The job is a bank heist that seems impossible as a two-person job. But they discuss the plan, work out the kinks, and they pull it off flawlessly.

Afterwards, on the safety of their ship, Vivi laughs in delight and throws her arms around Mr. King's neck. He smiles and hugs her back. She has to remind herself that this isn't real. She is using him, just as he is using her, and she cannot trust him.

* * *

As a pair, Miss Nefertiti and Mr. King work remarkably well together. It's their ability to teamwork that makes the pair better than the sum of its parts, and they rapidly gain a reputation among Baroque Works Millions.

They crawl their way up the ranks among the Millions. They pull of their assignments with speed and precision.

They're one of the top Millions when an unpaired Million—Mr. Sangria, Vivi thinks his name is, but she can't remember and she doesn't care—tries to get her to turn on Mr. King. The three of them are on assignment together, and Mr. King is the distraction.

"All you have to do is let him be a bit more distracting than we planned," cajoles Mr. Sangria. "Then we can report to the boss that he didn't work out, and we can team up. I'm much stronger than he is, you know."

Objectively, this may be true. Vivi and Mr. King are stronger than Mr. Sangria as a pair, but neither of them would stand a chance against him alone.

"I'll think about it," she responds coolly. It's a lie, and a part of her mind reminds her that she must be practical. Surely a stronger partner would be better? But the thought makes her want to throw up, and knife Mr. Sangria in the gut.

She moves faster than the plan dictated, getting into the cave just as Mr. King's distraction has barely begun. Mr. Sangria scowls at her as he follows, but he can't do anything about it: they have a hydra to fight now.

After the hydra is dead and the treasure acquired, Vivi plasters herself to Mr. King's side lest Mr. Sangria get any ideas. She's not sure that Mr. King even notices that anything is off. He's in a celebratory mood, and puts an arm around her waist almost absently.

She should push him away. But Vivi finds that she likes it, and relaxes into the touch. At some point in the six months that they've been partners, she realizes that her heart forgot that this was supposed to be impersonal—supposed to be pretend.

Two assignments later, Mr. King pulls her into the shadows of a moonlit harbor and kisses her on the mouth. Vivi winds her arms around his shoulders and kisses him back—but only for a moment before she forces herself to pull away. There's a crack in her heart that's already aching with the knowledge that she will one day betray this man. She looks up at the confusion in his eyes, and smiles as she pulls away.

She must hurt him. But she doesn't have to break his heart—not the way she broke Kohza's, again and again.

She still thinks of home sometimes. Her people are still there in her heart, her purpose and her drive. But everything else has become fuzzier and vaguer. She can't quite remember the intensity she used to feel for Pell; can't remember what Kohza looked like when they'd slept together; can't quite believe that she still has a father who loves her, out there in the world. Even when she sees Igaram, she can hardly remember the overprotective, fatherly figure he used to be. She sees him kill.

Vivi doesn't often see Igaram. Sometimes, they cannot contact each other for months at a time. She is careful not to ask about Mr. Igarappoi, but she learns to listen for any mention of him or his partner, Miss Bella. She never hears anything bad. She learns to bury the worry under carefully-concealed optimism during long stretches of silence.

They have been with Baroque Works for a year when an assignment brings all four of them to Whiskey Peak on a joint assignment. The assignment is a minor assassination job. Vivi and Bella play the role of distractions; Igaram and King pull off the assassinations.

For the first time, Vivi has a hard time keeping the mask on. The target is a criminal—a small-time smuggler—but he's Alabastan—still one of her people. Everything she's done over the past year has been for her people. That's been her anchor, her only port of call while she's let herself do things she should never be forgiven for.

Igaram will kill him. Vivi will be a bystander who aided the murder. She's not sure which is worse.

When it's done, Miss All Sunday herself shows up to announce that they're all being offered promotions to Frontier Agents.

Of course, they accept.

The names Miss Nefertiti and Mr. King are abandoned. They become Miss Saturday and Mr. 12. Vivi learns that the former Mr. 12 pair is now the Mr. 8 pair. Mr. Igarappoi and Miss Bella become the Mr. 11 pair.

They know that they can climb higher, so they excel in every way that they possibly could.

Their assignments keep them on their toes. They're never left anywhere for more than a few months at a time.

But now they come back to Whiskey Peak more often than not. Igaram is assigned a role as mayor of the town mostly populated with Millions. They raid every pirate ship that comes through, using the food and money to support not only the people in Whiskey Peak, but also the organization as a whole. Members regularly come to Whiskey Peak for supplies.

The organization is growing rapidly, Vivi realizes. They're ramping up to something.

But the Agent positions also become more steady. Three months after becoming Frontier Agents, Vivi and King are the Mr. 9 pair, and Igaram and Bella the Mr. 8 pair. The positions stop changing as much after that. They meet Mr. 5 thrice in those three months, and he's always the same man. The former Mr. 12 is no longer in the organization, and Vivi wonders what he did.

No one asks those sorts of questions in Baroque Works.

There is knowledge that naturally filters through, though, over time.

 _Money. Power. Mystery_. Those were the three promises of Baroque Works, and Vivi is starting to understand how they are supposed to be fulfilled.

There is the promise of a new country, a Utopia that they are building. Baroque Works will rule that country. Most seemed to interpret this as the literal _building_ of a country from nothing, and King in particular had a tendency to wax poetic about how he was going to design his home-to-be. Only Vivi and Igaram knew that the organization was in truth trying to take over an existing country.

If the organization is settling down, then there's not much time left. But they can't leave—they still don't know who the boss is.

Perhaps it's desperation, or perhaps it's providence. One day, the boss visits Whiskey Peak, unbeknownst to anyone. Miss All Sunday arrives to dole out assignments—and immediately Igaram and Vivi share a quiet look, because she's arrived on foot, _in person_ to deal out minor assignments. Something is going on.

They follow Miss All Sunday. King and Bella—technically Mr. 9 and Miss Monday, now—are too distracted to see them leaving.

Miss All Sunday strolls leisurely across the island, and to a little abandoned cabin on the far side of the graveyards. It's abandoned because they've always been ordered to not go near it. Now they see why—a ship is anchored next to the cabin, hidden from the rest of the island by the cactus graveyard. Miss All Sunday never travels in such style; she always rides her turtle. _The boss is here_.

It's just an ordinary cabin. They only have to peak into the window to see Sir Crocodile inside.

Vivi feels her heart stutter to a halt.

She'd always imagined that Crocodile was an ally—he'd always seemed so earnest when he helped her people, especially while she and Father were helpless.

And yet isn't it fitting? Bandits will always be bandits, and pirates will always be pirates. No one can be trusted. Vivi knows this too well: she's spent the last two years becoming someone that should never be trusted, should never be loved.

She thinks guiltily of King's kisses in the dark, and how she's only spent the last few months encouraging them, though she never lets it go past kissing. _You're no better than he_ , whispers a corner of her mind, but she chastises herself—pulls herself back together.

Crocodile is causing her people to die by the thousands, soon to be tens or hundreds of thousands, or even millions. Everything Vivi has done, every murder and heartbreak and deception she has orchestrated, is for a greater good. She is fighting fire with fire.

Crocodile doesn't look at the window, but they must not let him see them. She ducks down. Igaram is still staring, mouth agape, face ashen. Vivi reaches up and yanks him down. He looks at her, and she shakes her head once, firmly. He nods.

They leave swiftly and silently. Vivi turns back, though, just once. She sees Miss All Sunday standing next to the cabin. Their eyes meet. Vivi freezes. Miss All Sunday smiles—and nods. Vivi turns and goes. She doesn't tell Igaram a thing. If she'd wanted to kill them, she could have done it then and there. What is she waiting for?

That night, Vivi doesn't let King kiss her, either. She wraps her arms around his shoulders and buries her face in his shoulder.

"Can we just stay like this?" she asks.

"Of course," he says, wrapping his arms chastely but tightly around her waist, and she thinks her heart might burst out of her chest. It's glorious, and awful at the same time.

* * *

A month later, it ends.

Vivi and King botch a job thanks to a ragtag pirate crew, and only barely survive the resulting _clean-up_ by the Unluckies. Igaram and Bella—and the rest of the Millions on Whiskey Peak—botch the job of cleaning out that self-same pirate crew. But it doesn't matter, because the cat is out of the bag anyway. The masks are torn off both Vivi and Igaram.

There's no time to talk to King. No time to apologize properly, to explain. She never expected that luxury, anyway.

But he doesn't turn on her. He protects her, and so does Bella. It's in vain—both of them are helpless against Mr. 5—but King and Bella both put her before the organization, before everything else. They pay with their lives, and Vivi can't quite believe it, because she never could have done the same in return. If they'd been found to be traitors and her identity remained secret, she would have stood by and let them be eliminated.

 _Are you prepared to survive?_ Igaram had asked her, and she'd said yes. She'd used Kohza to that end. She's used King and Bella and abandoned them and everyone else. Because this was the only way to _save her people_ , damn it!

But Vivi is helpless, too, and all would be lost if the ragtag pirate crew didn't inexplicably decide to help her. Suddenly, she is surrounded by a pair of fearsomely strong idiots that call themselves captain and swordsman but are really inexplicably _stupid_ , and the conniving mind that is their navigator.

Allying herself with them isn't _smart_ , exactly, but she has no options and she's been reduced to pure practicality, now. It's sail with the pirates or sail with Igaram, and Igaram thinks she should trust the pirates. She trusts him. She agrees.

And not five minutes later, she watches him die, too.

She doesn't cry. She doesn't even feel the navigator pulling Vivi into her arms, offering words of reassurance and then shouting commands at everyone around.


	4. Nami

The ragtag pirate crew call themselves the Straw Hats, because their idiot captain has this weird obsession with his hat. Vivi has spent enough time with them as Miss Wednesday to know that this isn't an act—they are exactly as carefree and thoughtless as they seem. She collects herself quickly—there will be time for grief later—by reminding herself that she will need to guide them.

They are hopeless—they didn't even know they'd need a log pose to navigate the Grand Line. If Vivi can't hold herself together, they won't even make it to the second island.

The navigator—Nami, Vivi supposes she can call her now—has barked orders to her captain and the swordsman, and they're rushing to obey. Luffy drags his sleeping crew back to the ship—literally, one by the nose and the other by the leg—and Zoro prepares the ship. Vivi briefly worries when she can't find Carue, but it's a false alarm. Carue is already on the Straw Hats' ship, like this is natural.

They set sail.

And then Miss All Sunday is there, out of nowhere, admitting to murdering Igaram. But she's also offering them an eternal pose so that they might reach Alabasta faster.

Vivi hates this—Miss All Sunday is toying with them. She always has. But Vivi must put her people first, and she's already on a pirate ship. She can accept Miss All Sunday's help, and hope that if it's a trap she'll be able to get out in time.

But Luffy doesn't let her make that call. He crushes the eternal pose in his hand, and berates Miss All Sunday for trying to dictate his ship's course.

Miss All Sunday leaves with an amused smile.

Luffy demands breakfast, and the Straw Hats all wander into the kitchen.

To say that Vivi is confused would be a gross understatement.

They are not interested in her opinions about how to get to her own country. They are even less interested in her very practical warnings about this sea that she knows far better than any of them.

Not an hour ago, she was watching the captain and swordsman trying to kill each other, and their mutual malice was staggering. Now the captain is trying to steal the swordsman's breakfast, and the swordsman is fighting him off in exasperation and yelling. But Vivi is used to reading people, after her last two years, and she sees the affection and familiarity under this interaction—affection that was completely absent during their fight an hour ago.

Her eyes slide sideways to the other three. Sanji and Usopp are finally getting their explanations from Nami, who is visibly annoyed at having to offer this explanation. But none of that annoyance is directed at Vivi. Even when Sanji and Usopp ask a question that Vivi could answer, Nami immediately offers an annoyed response, as though she can tell that Vivi isn't quite in the mindset to give answers now. It's almost like Nami is protecting Vivi, but she can't for the life of her understand what Nami thinks she needs to be protected from, or why.

It's rude, Vivi berates herself, so the next time Usopp asks a question that she could answer, she does.

Nami doesn't intervene at all. Now, she lets Vivi talk. And when Sanji gets too suggestive, or Usopp asks a too-personal question, Vivi barely has a moment to flounder before Nami is shouting and punching her own crewmates—presumably on Vivi's behalf.

Luffy, Sanji and Usopp are the only ones who've slept last night, and Zoro is already napping on the deck. Nami announces her intent to sleep, entrusts the log pose to Sanji's care, and orders the crew to wake her up if anything happens. She pulls Vivi with her into her quarters.

There's only one bed, but there's not even a suggestion that Vivi might take the floor.

"You're tired—get some sleep," says Nami, urging her toward the bed.

Vivi doesn't understand it at all. But she is tired, so she only kicks off her shoes before crawling into the bed.

Nami gets in beside her, and Vivi stiffens.

"Don't worry," says Nami gently. "I won't touch you if you don't want to be touched. But this really is the only bed."

So they curl up side-by-side and sleep.

Nami snores, a little. Vivi stays awake for a long time, stiff and tense. When sleep finally takes over, it's restless and full of nightmares.

When she wakes, she's alone. As far as she can tell, Nami has kept her word and not touched her.

* * *

The Straw Hat crew is a benediction.

Their only goal in piracy is _freedom_. Surely there are better ways to get freedom? Vivi wonders, but she can't say it. She's been to the Reverie. She's seen slavery. She's seen people dehumanized and murdered and used by the people in power. She's held her tongue against these atrocities, because that's what one does at the Reverie. It's for the greater good, Father always emphasized. The celestial dragons are ultimately protecting the world, and as many people as they can. These atrocities are the price for that protection.

Freedom is the best reason to be a pirate, especially in such an unjust world.

The Straw Hats are kind, but they aren't meddlesome. No one tries to get Vivi to talk about her worries. No one tries to draw her out of her shell.

But they all understand the importance of getting her back to Alabasta. They simply take that for granted.

So Vivi is the one trying to push herself out of her shell, to be more sociable and friendly than she feels like.

There had been tense, sleepless nights in her time with Baroque Works when she would wonder if she could ever go back to being the girl she used to be. She wondered about the coldness that had bloomed through her, and the sultry flirtations that had once upon a time been so very unlike her. She wondered, _Is this who I am now? Have I become my mask?_

If she had time to think, she might have thought that it would take time to let Nefertiti melt away and truly be herself again.

But it's easy. She's been with the Straw Hats for three days when she realizes that she's laughing and smiling and she _has been_ , and none of it is a mask. She hasn't flirted with any of them—save with Zoro, when she fought him while she was still Miss Wednesday.

When she realizes this, she reviews her interactions with Zoro over the last three days. He hasn't been unkind, but nor has he paid her any particular attention. She wonders, _briefly_ , if this is residual awkwardness because of that fight, that flirtation.

That question doesn't last long. Nothing seems to bother Zoro. He seems to have two modes: bloodthirst and imperviousness. Nami and Sanji inspire his bloodthirst in a way that Vivi comes to see is utterly deliberate: it's an embarrassingly overt demonstration of affection by people know know him so well that they see that he processes strong emotions most easily as vitriol. At first, she thinks that the fight between Zoro and Luffy was more of the same.

But over those first three days, she comes to see that that was not the norm. She sees the way that Zoro and Luffy are always side-by-side for the first day and a half before they slowly let the cord extend—and she thinks she understands. Zoro is soft and hard in turn with Luffy in a way that he isn't with anyone else. When Luffy talks to Vivi with affection, when he wraps his long limbs around her because he's just tactile that way, Zoro is always in the background, watching stoically.

Vivi thought he was evaluating her. And he was, but she realizes that it's not about _her_ so much as it is about _Luffy_. Luffy is too trusting, too simple, and his crew know that. And Zoro is the one who positions himself at Luffy's side, never standing in Luffy's way but ready to intervene should Vivi present a threat.

Zoro lives in Luffy's innermost orbit. He's always there when Luffy falls off the ship—how he does that so often when he knows he can't swim, Vivi will never understand—just as he was there to fight off a hundred bounty hunters when the rest of the crew was knocked out.

Vivi realizes that her flirtations would never have mattered to him. If anything, she should have been worrying about the way that she held a knife to his sleeping captain. But that doesn't seem to bother him now either, anymore than it did then. It's over and done with, and that seems to be that.

Another piece of herself that she hadn't realized was still braced for the worst relaxes.

She holds herself together for long enough to get to the women's quarters—that's what they call it now, instead of Nami's quarters, like Vivi is a fixture on their ship and among them. She collapses to her knees and cries.

She doesn't know why, at first, but then she lets go and it all comes flooding back.

Igaram is dead.

King is dead.

Even Bella is dead.

Vivi is going home to a kingdom full of people trying to kill each other—where her father and a beloved friend are leading factions aiming to kill each other. Either of them might hate her—for leaving, for what she's done, for what she became. Either of them might not listen to her—to this truth that cost her so much to find.

And that cost—oh, that cost.

Vivi is a murderer and a liar and a thief. Nothing will ever erase that.

She vomits on the carpeted floor and still can't stop crying. In fact, she's crying so hard that she can't breathe.

"Help me breathe," says a gentle voice in her ear. "I need you to help me breathe, Vivi. Can you feel my breath? Breathe with me."

Vivi doesn't understand what that means, but she tries to obey. A chest is pressed to her back, and she can feel it expand with inhales, and deflate with exhales. She tries to follow along.

Inhale.

It's jerky, and she realizes that she's trembling violently.

Exhale.

A hand is on her stomach, pressing her firmly against the body behind her. It's grounding, somehow.

Inhale.

She can ear the breath in her ear.

Exhale.

She can feel the breath brush air against her cheek.

Inhale.

The ringing in her ears lessens.

Exhale.

Her heart rate is starting to calm.

 _Oh_ , Vivi realizes with the next breath cycle, _I was panicking. I was honestly panicking_.

She's never panicked before. She hasn't cried since that time she was fourteen and the last proof of Kohza's touch faded from her body.

The thought of Kohza sends her careening back towards grief and panic, so she pushes it away.

"I'm sorry I got your carpet dirty," she says to Nami when her breathing is even again.

Nami leans forward over Vivi's shoulder to press their cheeks together. Her arms wind around Vivi's stomach in an embrace.

"Don't worry about that right now. I know you'll clean it up in a minute."

Vivi sighs and leans into the touch.

The Straw Hats are a benediction. But Nami feels like the center of it all for Vivi. Nami is conniving, and for all Vivi knows, still wants money at the end of it all. Yet the kindness and understanding she's shown Vivi is unrivaled. She's always there when Vivi needs someone. She responds to Vivi's subtlest cues before Vivi is even aware of giving the cue. Nami offers silence and conversation, solitude and companionship, slipping between the extremes easily as if Vivi's every need matters to her every moment of every day.

Vivi has always been slow to love. But she's known Nami for three days, and already—

She can't finish the thought. It's too frightening. She betrayed Kohza and Mr. 9. For all she knows, Pell feels betrayed by her, too. She might end up betraying the Straw Hats. She might hurt them as she's hurt so many other people along the way.

But Nami's reassuring whispers are like a drug, and at the moment, Vivi can't imagine anything else. She thinks of Zoro, always in Luffy's orbit, always there when he's needed. Nami has been doing the same for Vivi.

For the first time, Vivi wonders if Luffy ever feels this way for Zoro—like the world is brighter and better because there's this one person always there. She smiles to herself as she leans further into Nami. No—Luffy is too simple for that. This emotion is all Vivi's.

* * *

Vivi is just learning to let go of her anxieties when they arrive at the next island. Here she learns that Nami's fixture in her orbit doesn't extend past the ship in this unknown jungle. Or maybe it's just that she trusts Luffy to keep Vivi safe. But Zoro's fixture in Luffy's orbit also seems to dissipate now that he wants to explore. Maybe that's his trust in Luffy, too.

Vivi cannot understand, even after all these days, how these people have such enormous faith in someone so objectively _stupid_. He means well, sure, but _objectively_ , his actions are careless and dangerous far more often than not.

Case in point, they haven't been away from the ship for more than ten minutes before Luffy gets himself swallowed by a dinosaur.

He's rescued by a giant, who invites them to his home for lunch.

Vivi thinks she read this fairy tale somewhere. She doesn't think it ended well.

* * *

Baroque Works shows up to kill them all, because of course it does. Vivi spends most of the fight stuck on a wax cake with Zoro and Nami. The vitriol between them, she reflects, also seems to serve as a sort of stress response. They seem to find comfort in endless bickering—Zoro is provoking, and Nami responding with more vitriol than strictly necessary, so it seems all very deliberate to Vivi.

But Zoro is utterly serious when he suggests cutting his feet off.

And, well, two feet are a small sacrifice to pay for her people, so Vivi is prepared to join him.

Then Luffy, Usopp and Carue show up—and Zoro relaxes instantly. He's bleeding out his ankles, and it's like he doesn't care, because his crewmates are there now. Or maybe it's just Luffy, Vivi's not sure anymore.

The amputation plan seems to be out the window, and now Zoro's striking poses in case they do get turned into wax dolls, which is seeming the more likely option by the minute, because Luffy is _just as stupid as usual_.

At least, Vivi reflects wryly, neither Nami nor Zoro shy away from discussing the sheer stupidity of their captain.

Somehow, they get out of that not only alive—if a bit singed—but with an eternal pose to Alabasta. It seems too good to be true.

It is.

* * *

Nami is dying, and Vivi can't bear it. Worse, Nami has been hiding how bad it is for _Vivi's_ sake. To get them to Alabasta quicker, because she knows that Vivi's priority is her people. Because, inexplicably, Vivi's priority has become _Nami's_ priority.

And the Straw Hats look at her like they think she might ask them to ignore Nami's condition to get them to Alabasta faster.

She swallows the bitterness. She reminds herself that she's done worse for her people.

But this is _Nami_.

These are the _Straw Hats_.

She can't. Her people are her priority, yes, but—this is the line.

Here, at last—proof that Vivi still has her humanity.

She won't let Nami suffer like this for her sake. She can't.

The Straw Hats beam up at her. But that's not what makes her feel warm inside. It's something more internal, something that was cold and empty for a long time, warming and filling up again.

It feels like forgiveness.

The next day, when they dock at a hostile island, Vivi gets shot and Luffy nearly lashes out in violence. She immediately schools him—and he listens. It doesn't occur to her until later that he both tried to protect her and _listened_ to her. He is a pirate captain, but his love and humility are genuine, and boundless.

Vivi realizes that she might have misjudged him all along. Luffy just might be someone _she_ should be admiring and looking up to, too.

* * *

Vivi is forced to leave Nami's side to get her to the doctor. The route is a dangerous one, and Vivi isn't nearly strong enough to be an asset to Luffy and Sanji.

It turns out that Nami _was_ dying. Vivi gives up all pretenses when she learns this. She lets the big gorilla doctor—Chopper, he calls himself—lead her to Nami's room, and she throws her arms carefully around Nami's shoulders and thanks every deity she's ever heard of that Nami is alive. And then she fixes herself in Nami's orbit, because she can't bear to leave.

When the doctor tells Nami that she has to stay for another week, Vivi can't condone Nami's immediate attempts to escape, because she _almost died_. If Vivi hadn't discovered that line in the sand, Nami would be dead, and it would be Vivi's fault.

But the doctor gives them permission to leave, disguised as a refusal to let them. They leave, and Chopper comes with them.

Nami adores Chopper. Vivi watches, and sees her help Chopper out of his shell.

Something twists in Vivi's chest—Nami is this kind to everyone. Nami has become the center of Vivi's world, but Vivi is just another person in Nami's.

It's strange. Vivi doesn't think she's ever felt this sort of jealousy before. It's not the acute anger she's read about in stories. It's more a dull ache, a sort of resignation.

Nami is a force of nature. She is Vivi's center of orbit, but Nami's isn't Vivi, after all—it's Luffy, just like Zoro.

The Straw Hats are a solar system, Vivi sees, and Luffy is their sun. Zoro is the planet always steadily in orbit around the sun. Nami is a meteor, orbiting the sun but often straying from a fixed orbit to circle a planet that's been recently pulled into that sun's gravity field. But Vivi is such a tiny thing, she fell into orbit around the meteor instead. And Nami is still circling the sun, now in Chopper's orbit for a time.

Vivi is a moon of a moon.

Her gaze strays to Luffy.

She's a part of this solar system for now. So, she supposes, he's her sun, too.

It's no reason to be bitter, she tells herself.

It takes some time for her to feel the truth to that.


	5. Luffy

Kohza feels like something out of a dream, or a nightmare. Vivi doesn't even realize how much he doesn't feel real anymore until they've gone two days without food on the way to Alabasta and she thinks, _I'm going to see Kohza again_.

It's not a choice. He's the leader of the rebellion, and she's the princess who went undercover to unmask the enemy. Neither of them can be replaced in this equation. It must be them.

Vivi reflects that she's less nervous than she might have expected to be.

When she decided to go to Kohza two years ago, it never once occurred to her that he might be the one she would have to go to when it was all said and done. She'd never expected to come home to a country where he was single-handedly leading the rebellion against her father. She'd never truly expected to come home alone, Igaram's remains at the bottom of the sea. She'd been young and foolish, only thinking of the present and what she needed to have the strength to go forwards and leave her heart behind. Perhaps, in a small way, she had been imaging that she could entrust her heart to Kohza, leaving it behind with him while she did what she had to do.

But her heart wasn't left behind with Kohza. She only buried it deep inside herself, where the Straw Hats effortlessly dug it right back up.

Now that they have, she wonders what she gave Kohza—if she gave him anything at all, or if she only took from him and left.

 _So what was that night for?_ she's asked herself in the dark nights since Whiskey Peak. _What did I leave him with? What did I sacrifice that friendship for?_

She doesn't cried about it—but in the weeks that it takes them to reach Alabasta from Drum Island, she does lie awake staring at the ceiling. Some nights, Nami wakes and wraps her arms around her in silence. Vivi knows that she thinks that this is about Vivi's selfless concern for the many citizens of Alabasta, and she feels the guilt like a knife between her ribs. She knows that she must tell the truth. She's too used to living behind a mask; now she must learn to face her own flaws.

It still takes her until the second time to admit it.

"I'm sorry. It's not what you think."

"And what do I think?" asks Nami, amusement in her voice.

"That this is about—about my people. It isn't."

"You don't lie awake worrying about them?"

"No, I do—but not now."

"What are you worrying about now, then?"

Vivi has to hesitate. "One particular person."

"Why don't you tell me about this one particular person?" asks Nami. She drops a light kiss to Vivi's shoulder, and it makes Vivi shudder. It's nothing to Nami, of course—this is just how she offers comfort and affection. But it's something Vivi will treasure forever.

She wonders, sometimes. She loves Nami so. She is still Nami's moon. But as Alabasta draws closer, she knows that Kohza still holds a part of her heart. Just as a part of her was left behind with King and Igaram—not even Nefertiti, but a part that was indubitably Vivi. Just as a part of her will always yearn for the company of the falcon that was her first love.

Then again, each and every one of her people hold a piece of her heart, too. It's not the same—Kohza and Pell and Nami will always have a certain weight in Vivi's heart that no one else could hope to match. But it's her heart all the same.

The stories say that a heart can only be given to one. The stories imply that a woman who gives her heart to more than one person at once is insincere.

Those stories are lies.

Vivi is a princess, and she has always known that she would have to balance any personal loves with the abstract loves that make a ruler compassionate and wise. Is it so strange that she can love Nami fiercely and single-mindedly now, even knowing that this undivided attention cannot last?

So it's not the guilt that holds her tongue paralyzed. It's not even the fear of judgement.

It's that she cannot imagine anything that anyone could say to make it better.

"I took something from someone," said Vivi quietly. "Right before I left. I didn't tell him what I was doing. I asked for his time, and he gave it to me. I thought I was leaving something with him, but I think I might have only been taking."

"Hm," says Nami. "And what were you doing?"

Vivi disentangles herself from Nami's arms and rolls over to look her in the eye.

"What?"

"You say you didn't tell him what you were doing. What were you doing?"

"I was—leaving to go undercover with Baroque Works."

There's a moment of silence, and when Vivi makes no move to continue, Nami's eyes harden.

"Vivi. You don't have to tell me anything you don't want to, but it sounds like—that exchange was out of the ordinary, wasn't it?"

Vivi blinks. Thinks of the two years of silence. "Yes."

"Then maybe he didn't know what you were doing, but if he mattered at all, then he knew that you were doing something. Whatever he gave you, he gave freely. You didn't take anything he didn't offer."

Vivi sits up abruptly, because Nami's gaze is straight and earnest but she doesn't know what she's talking about.

"You don't even know him, or what happened," she says. She sounds like a petulant child.

"No," says Nami calmly. "But I know you. And I know that people who matter—people who care—they see more than you think. And sometimes, it's easier to pretend that you're the one just taking and taking and taking, because it's _scary_ to imagine that they _see you_ , they see what you're not saying, and they love and care for you anyway."

Vivi cries, then, but not really because of Kohza. There will be time for that later. Right now, there's something more pressing.

"I love you," she says to Nami.

"Of course you do," says Nami, smiling and pulling Vivi back down into the blankets. "Ready to go back to sleep?"

Vivi nods. It doesn't even occur to her to expect Nami to say it back. It's just—she's never told anyone, not once. And just this once, she thinks, she'd like Nami to know beyond a shadow of a doubt how much she cares. But as she drifts off into sleep, she hears Nami whisper, "Of course we all love you to bits too, silly."

They're talking about different sorts of love, but that doesn't matter. For the first time, there is no pain, no bitterness. There is only joy, and bliss.

* * *

Nanohana is chaotic, because Luffy is an idiot as usual, and brings a marine captain to the rest of them. They barely have time to restock before they're sprinting for the ship again.

A rebellion is looming. Vivi's people are dying. But she can't help the wave of affection and exhilaration she feels as they run. Life is never boring with the Straw Hats, and she's grown to almost expect these improbable escapes from near-certain capture or death.

Even so, it's a shock when another Devil's Fruit user steps in to save them—and a bigger one when he introduces himself as Luffy's brother.

Not for the first time, Vivi finds herself staring at Luffy and reevaluating him.

Ace is kind and polite, and freakishly strong in a way that puts even Luffy to shame. He speaks affectionately of Luffy as someone precious to be protected and worried about, which—of course, the crew and Vivi herself have often lamented the captain's idiocy. But Luffy as Vivi has known him is something beyond damage, beyond hurt, beyond consequences.

For the first time, she looks at him and sees a _person_ , with a history and loves and losses just like hers and—oh, why does that feel so different?

Reality soon catches up with her, and everything else falls to the wayside for a is dry and dead.

It was already suffering from the drought when Vivi came through two years ago. But there's no life left, now. Not one single plant, not one single person. The remaining buildings are crumbling, or buried in sand.

Luffy's not interested in the story of how this city crumbled to ruin, of course. Apart from Nami, Sanji and sometimes Usopp, they never are interested in details, even when it's important.

Except…this time, when the conversation circles back to the state of Erumalu, and Vivi starts explaining everything—the droughts, the rain in Alubarna, the dance powder—they listen. All of them, they _listen._ And when she finishes, after a silence, a building crumbles some distance behind them. It's like her country, Vivi thinks for a split second, but no—it didn't just fall. Luffy, Sanji and Usopp have brought it down in anger on her behalf.

And Luffy—Luffy is seriously talking like he has stakes in this.

He's never cared before. Oh, he's understood that this is their goal, and that this is something that Vivi cares about. But he's never cared to understand what's going on, or why Vivi needs to do something. It's always been abundantly clear to Vivi that her love and concern for her people is not transitive.

Except—it seems that it might be, now, in some small way.

She looks at Luffy and thinks to herself: _being in his orbit might not be so bad, after all_.

* * *

They make it to Yuba, but Yuba is a ruin, almost as buried in sand as Erumalu. There's only one person here, and that person is Toto. _Toto_ , Kohza's father, who is skinny and has aged twenty years in two, and still speaks trustingly of Vivi's father. He says nothing of Vivi's relationship with Kohza—only that she must stop them.

He still believes that she has the power to reach Kohza. It means everything and nothing. Everything, because Kohza's father still believes that he will listen to her—but also nothing, because Kohza has left his own father behind in this desolate, dried-up place to head his army in Katorea, where he is plotting against Vivi's father.

But none of this will help Toto.

So she only assures him that she will stop the war.

She is lying. All she has is plans and contingencies and hope. She's sent Carue to her father with a letter containing everything she knows, but that letter could get intercepted. Even if it arrives, there's little that they can do, cast as the villains as they are. She'll talk to Kohza, but he could not believe her. Baroque Works thinks they're dead for the time being, but their survival could become apparent at any moment, and they could die at assassins' hands.

So any assurance is a lie—but it's a lie Toto needs to hear from her. It's not like the lies she told as Miss Wednesday. He knows it's a lie, but he thanks her anyway.

They overnight in Yuba, and when Sanji tries to share a bed with Vivi—it's not something he's ever tried before, but she thinks he means well—Usopp starts a pillow fight that rapidly escalates to include everyone but Vivi.

Once again, Vivi is put at ease by these people and their antics. It occurs to her, as she smiles and lets the knots in her stomach unravel, that Luffy is missing. But she isn't worried. It's a new feeling, trusting people.

She goes to sleep imaging what it would be like to be able to trust that Kohza will hear her and believe her. She wakes up _believing_ it. They've known each other too long for him to not listen.

Vivi is the first to wake, but Toto is already up and about.

"Did you sleep at all, Uncle Toto?" asks Vivi.

Toto chuckles and ignores the question. "That boy captain is quite something."

Vivi blinks at him.

"You probably never realized, but your father and I used to talk about the hope that you and Kohza would… But, well. That was another era. You were always so wise, even when you were a child who used to get into nose-bloodying fights with my boy." He trails off to look into the distance for a few moments, then his eyes fix on her again. "We were just two old men playing pretend. Oh, don't feel bad, Vivi! It's just—you never know, in life. You can only have faith in people you think are worthy. I have faith in the people you choose to trust."

He says it with such conviction. But he doesn't have the faintest idea what Vivi has done to get here.

She embraces him. Her eyes are dry. Her blood is running hot and cold at once.

They start southwards, to return to the ship and to Katorea. But they haven't been traveling an hour before Luffy voices his objection.

He _berates_ her. He berates _Vivi_. For her naiveté, for her _earnestness_.

And she _hits him_.

She's never done this, not since she and Kohza were children.

Even when she was Nefertiti, she was always very measured with her violence. Even when Miss All Sunday showed up after killing Igaram, Vivi held herself still.

Now, she hits _Luffy_. Because he, the _simple idiot_ , is telling her that _Vivi_ is simple. No, it's not even that—it's that he's trying to take all the hope out from under her. He's telling her that she's bound to fail. Any number of people have said or implied that, but coming from Luffy, it hurts more than anything.

She isn't putting enough at stake, Luffy accuses her, and Vivi despairs. She's given up everything. Her home, her comfort, her morals, her loves, her innocence, her honesty. All she has left is her life, and he dares tell her—!

If she lets herself think about it, she knows that she will find him to be right, so she doesn't. She slaps Luffy until her hands hurt, and it doesn't even occur to her that he's rubber. This won't accomplish anything.

"I don't _have anything else!_ " Vivi cries, and Luffy catches her by the wrist.

"You have _us!_ " he bellows at her, like this should have been obvious to her. "So let us stake our lives on this, too!"

Vivi stares at him.

In an instant, her world shatters and rebuilds itself. She's no longer a moon of any kind. Luffy's gravity has hijacked her orbit.

She's a planet, just like all the others.

Nami's here at her shoulder, offering support and comfort as always.

But it's different, now, from how it was three minutes ago.

Vivi is one of the six people here who love Luffy and live in his orbit. They love each other too, but Luffy is their sun for a reason.

She can't bear the thought of any of them dying. She wouldn't dream of asking anyone to risk death helping her save her people. This is why her plan was always nonviolent negotiations. But she's not asking. Luffy's not even really offering so much as demanding that she trust them enough to take what she needs.

Vivi thinks of what Nami told her that one night.

 _Sometimes, it's easier to pretend that you're the one just taking and taking and taking, because it's_ scary _to imagine that they_ see you _, they see what you're not saying, and they love and care for you anyway._

Luffy sees her. Luffy loves her, as he loves Zoro and Nami and Usopp and Sanji and Chopper.

Vivi cries in Nami's arms, but these are tears of joy.

She doesn't fear for them. They have offered their lives at her feet to help her save her people. They are the Straw Hats, and they do the impossible.

* * *

But a few hours later, Luffy's managed to attract Smoker once again, and Vivi is separated from the others.

Then there is Pell, swooping in to save her like some fantasy she might have dreamed up when she was five, and Vivi's heart is so swollen that she thinks she might explode.

It doesn't last. Miss All Sunday shows up, and death follows her like a shadow.

Vivi watches Pell die, too.

She can't believe it at first, and it happened right before her eyes. Then comes the despair, and she wonders if she'll watch everyone she ever loved get murdered one at a time. Then comes the anger. Crocodile is determined to rip everything from her: her country and her people, yes, but also her father, her guardians, her friends. Everything and everyone she ever loved is under direct threat from Crocodile. It's hard to believe that he has no personal vendetta against her, because he couldn't have hurt her more if he tried.

Miss All Sunday leads her into a room below the casino, and Vivi sees Luffy, Zoro, Nami and Usopp in a cage. She doesn't need more than a glimpse to know that it's sea stone. If it weren't, it would be bent and broken by now.

Vivi sees red and forgets, for a moment, that lashing out at Crocodile is utterly futile.

She strikes. He counters.

He tries to kill the Straw Hats, but he's made a crucial mistake: he left Vivi free, to taunt her with her impotence.

It's a bad taunt. Vivi won't let anyone else die.

It isn't her, in the end, but Sanji who says the day. Vivi only leads him to the cage. But Luffy shouts praise to her anyway, and Vivi can't help but respond with delight. He's not saying it to make her feel better. He's not that sort of person.

The encounter has given them a monologue of Crocodile's plan. It can still be stopped, if they can reach Alubarna by the next morning. It's sunset now. It's pushing it, but they can try.

But Crocodile refuses to let Vivi go. He catches her as they try to escape.

Luffy takes her place. He tosses Vivi back casually and lets himself be pulled away.

Zoro catches her. Of course he does. Because he's at the center of Luffy's orbit, yes—but also because they're all drawn to each other's gravity as well.

But at this moment, his eyes are wide with terror. So are Sanji's.

Because Luffy has taken it upon himself to fight Crocodile. To end this. To buy the rest of them time.

The Straw Hats, always the first to trust each other, are tense and frightened for Luffy. Vivi's only just realized how deeply she cares for their captain, but that doesn't mean she hasn't learned a thing or two. She tries to remind them to trust him. It disperses the tension, but only because they see right through her.

* * *

Miraculously, they make it to Alubarna in time. Vivi and Carue are positioned before the city walls, in the path of the rebel army. The others are distracting the Baroque Works agents on the scene.

Vivi breathes, and remembers Kohza.

Not as he was that night when she was fourteen. That was something removed from everything else they've ever had. It was awkward and personal, and something for their hearts and their hearts alone. It has no place here, on what will soon be a battlefield. It has no place in the negotiations between princess and rebel army commander.

She remembers him when they were children. She remembers the games, and the jokes, and the way she delighted in calling _Leader!_ whether to show him a plant or a thought or just in pure joy.

But the royal army shoots a few early shots. Not to wound, just to raise the dust so that the rebel army can't see her.

It's too late to come up with a new plan. Honestly, it's probably too late to even move.

Vivi decides to have faith, and call out to Kohza with her voice, heart and soul. He will hear her, she's sure. She knows this much.

* * *

She is wrong.

Vivi would be dead for it twice over, but Carue saves her time and time again. Then, when Carue is at the end of his rope, Sanji shows up out of nowhere to save her again.

Luffy was right. Vivi's life and voice and soul are not enough. They've never been enough, she reflects as her stomach twists painfully. She's paid with so many lives to get here.

But this time, the reflection is gone in a blink of an eye.

Luffy and his crew have offered her everything. They're still fighting, and as long as someone is standing, there's no room for despair.

The war has begun.

Vivi runs for the palace.

* * *

Crocodile shows up. He claims Luffy is dead. Vivi has no time for grief right now, but she has a moment to think that at least this was one death that she didn't have to witness—and to realize that that perhaps makes it worse for the rest of eternity.

But that's also a strength. She hasn't seen him fall. Crocodile could be lying. He probably is.

Crocodile is predictably cruel and manipulative. He treats humans like toys. There's only one way to beat him: by not rising to his provocations.

No one succeeds. Not even Chaka. Vivi's life is rapidly morphing into a river of deaths, sustained by the blood of people she loves.

And that's when Kohza shows up.

* * *

Kohza is smart. He takes a look at the scene before him, and he knows what he's seeing.

But even so—

"Vivi, who's the one who stole this country's rain?"

Vivi's the one he turns to for the truth.

There is no time for anything but the _here_ and _now_. And all the negatives of the last four years have melted away.

* * *

Not even Kohza can completely maintain his cool in the face of Crocodile's provocations.

But by now, Vivi knows this game. And she's not letting yet _another_ love be lost to these people.

She tackles him and shouts sense at him.

And he listens.

He _listens_.

* * *

She watches him go down anyway. He's shot in the back three times. He crumples in a pool of blood.

Crocodile throws Vivi off the palace walls an instant after she declares her love for her country.

It's fitting.

Everyone is dead or dying anyway.

* * *

And in the sky—

A familiar voice calling her name.

A giant falcon sweeping down towards her.

Luffy.

Pell.

 _Luffy_.

Luffy catches her in his arms, a full-on embrace that absorbs the impact. Vivi wraps herself around him in return, and lets her insecurities pour out.

And Luffy smiles at her, and his light shines throw, dissipating her insecurities and fears like shadows.

He truly is too good for this world. Vivi loves him as much as she is capable of loving another person. But there is never any pain or darkness in loving Luffy, and she knows now that there never will be.

He is made to be the love of many lives. Hers. Zoro's. Nami's. Probably the rest of the Straw Hats', too.

She clings to her sun and he warms her from the inside out.

* * *

The rest of them show up, bloodied and tired, but _alive_. The sight of Nami, bloody and shaky on her feet but as loud and violent as ever, makes tears come to Vivi's eyes. For one glorious minute, they're the one chaotic, bickering unit that they are meant to be.

"Sorry, guys," says Luffy, pausing with his arms braced on the top of the palace walls to launch himself upwards. "I lost to that guy once. But I'm going to win, this time."

"Hurry up with it," Zoro rolls his eyes.

"If you can't win, then who will?!" Usopp demands.

Luffy looks around at them. His eyes meet Vivi's and stay there.

"I'm going to finish this. All of it."

And all of the Straw Hats cheer.

Tears come to Vivi's eyes, and she can't hold them in.

She hasn't lost them. They're still fighting for her.

She loves them so. And they love her, too. Balance, equivalence—she's spent so long thinking that was important. But it isn't, really. Perhaps, by some measure, she loves them—Luffy especially, and Nami too—more than they love her. Yet it is still true that they love her with all their hearts.

The stories always said that balance in love was loving one person above all others and being loved above all others in return. As usual, the stories were wrong, wrong, wrong.

Balance in love is right here, right now: being a planet in a solar system that's changed course for her and her alone.

Vivi is standing in a battlefield of her people murdering each other for no reason. Not far away is Kohza's body, no doubt being trampled by these people. Her life is one endless bloodstain.

And yet she is surrounded by the love of her falcon, and her solar system. She's the luckiest girl in the world.

There's no time to dwell on anything, though. There's a bomb to be found. But it's okay—she has a whole crew to help her.

* * *

They're slow to locate the bomb, and when they do, they barely have enough time.

Nami comes up with the plan that will get Vivi up there. Every single crew member suffers to get her up there, and for once, she doesn't question their sacrifice. They are offering everything to her freely, and Vivi will accept.

Stopping the cannon being fired isn't enough, of course, because Crocodile is a psychopath.

And Vivi experiences one last gift. One last loving sacrifice.

Pell blows himself up to save her and everyone else in the kingdom.

Vivi screams his name and doesn't look away until the flash and the blast force her to.

Love, she reminds herself. This was Pell's love, freely offered. It will not be in vain.

Vivi shouts at her people to stop fighting. Her voice, her life and her soul are all she has left, but her life and soul aren't much use anymore. She has only her voice.

No one hears her.

She doesn't stop trying.

Crocodile's body comes flying out of nowhere.

 _Love_. Luffy's, this time. Luffy is nowhere to be seen, however.

Tears pour down Vivi's face. She is so loved. She is blessed.

She keeps shouting.

The rain comes. The battlefield goes quiet.

Vivi's voice reaches her people.

They look up, and they _listen_. This, too, is love.

But they are dubious about Vivi's claim that there is no enemy anymore. Vivi has the facts, but she finds that she lacks the words. How does she explain to her people something so terrible?

As it turns out, she doesn't have to, because Igaram shows up. He is short of breath, but otherwise upright and perfect and _alive_.

And then Kohza's voice joins Igaram's. His voice is broken and rasping, but he's still trying to end the war and perfect and _alive_.

The Straw Hats are alive. Father and Luffy are alive. The people listen to Father, at long last.

It's all the things she never dared to hope, come true in one felled swoop.

Vivi is the _luckiest girl in the world_.

* * *

Vivi has a brief moment to tell Kohza about Uncle Toto, but Kohza is unconcerned. He only tells her, lightly, that she worries too much. Then he mentions that he will return to Yuba as soon as he is able.

Of course he is, she thinks. This is still a little painful, she finds. But it's all right. It's still love. It's not like when they were children, nor like that one night. It's different. It's lasting.

* * *

Luffy is unconscious for three days and nights after that, and Vivi hardly leaves his side. It's not like he'd be alone. An old banquet hall has been prepared with seven beds, and they all sleep there. But she feels like her life begins and ends with him right now, and she wants to be there. She's with Luffy more than Chopper, because Chopper also has to look after the rest of the Straw Hats, and is also offering his services to the Alabastans.

But Chopper also makes sure that Vivi gets a solid eight hours of sleep a night, and he sits with Luffy while she does.

Of course, Vivi has other responsibilities as well. Most importantly, she has to greet all the people she left behind two years ago. It shouldn't feel like a chore, she knows, but she hates to leave Luffy's side.

It's woefully obvious to everyone. But they don't mind. They smile, and let her go.

Mrs. Terracotta wants a proper talk, and that they do by Luffy's bedside. She tells Mrs. Terracotta everything she reasonably can in a few hours. Not about the stop in Yuba on the way out, but she doesn't shy away from the rest. She admits to the crimes she's committed. Mrs. Terracotta cries and hugs her and apologizes.

Vivi is bewildered as to what Mrs. Terracotta thinks she could have done to change anything, but she's grateful all the same.

"Luffy saved me in every way," Vivi concludes quietly. "He saved my life, my soul, my heart, my people. Someone else might have managed one or two, but not all."

"Yes," says Mrs. Terracotta simply, and looks down at Luffy with as much wonder as Vivi feels.

With a jolt, Vivi remembers that Luffy will want to eat when he wakes.

"He eats like a hundred people after a battle," Vivi explains to Mrs. Terracotta. "And he likes to have a party. I'd like to be able to have a banquet as soon as he wakes up, whenever that is."

"Of course!" says Mrs. Terracotta with a winning grin.

Luffy wakes up, and at last—pure, unadulterated joy. For one evening, and one evening alone.

Then the call comes, that their ship has been taken by Mr. 2, and the adventure is back on.

They invite Vivi to come with them.

She can't. She _can't_. But she also can't say no.

They create a contingency plan so that Vivi can join them if she so chooses.

Luffy tries to make her go right then. The others chastise him and refuse to push her.

What did she ever do to deserve love like this? She can't even imagine.

* * *

Vivi goes to the rendezvous spot, but only to say goodbye.

Vivi loves each and every one of them, and each and every one of them loves her back. Luffy, though—it's his love that's exhilarating, her love for him that makes it so hard to say no. It's like a dream, except she doesn't ever have to wake up if she doesn't want to.

But Vivi isn't that girl. She's a princess of a nation, and the Straw Hats aren't the only people she loves, who love her back. She has a nation full of people who listened to her when she begged them to stop a war. And that's nothing to scoff at, either.

She could pick and pull apart each of these loves: Pell, Nami, Chaka, Zoro, Father, Usopp, Igaram, Chopper, Uncle Toto, Sanji, Kohza, Luffy. But what would be the point? Each one is a little different, a world unto itself. And Vivi isn't any of those loves individually, but all of them, together, all at once.

Vivi thought, once, that nothing about loving Luffy could be painful, and that was wrong. This, now—saying no, telling him and his crew to sail away and leave her behind? This hurts.

But when she asks for reassurance, that she is still one of them and will continue to be, they give it to her as one.

* * *

It's not long afterwards that Vivi gets word that Miss All Sunday has joined them, under the name Nico Robin. Vivi doesn't doubt a single member of that crew for an instant.

She will never forget what she was, what she did as Miss Wednesday and Nefertiti. But nor will she ever forget how the Straw Hats healed her mind and soul so utterly in the few weeks that they were together. If Luffy likes Miss All Sunday, then Vivi cannot doubt that judgement.

Vivi closes her eyes and wishes Nico Robin a place in their shared solar system. She wishes her the love and trust that healed Vivi herself.

* * *

Vivi's life has become solitary, in a way. Everyone she's ever fallen in love with is gone. Pell and King are still dead. Kohza had left Alubarna for Yuba even before Luffy woke up. Nami and Luffy are away at sea, far beyond where Vivi could reach.

But that's okay. Vivi is fortunate. She has her father, Igaram and Chaka. She has her people.

Then a scarred, weakened Pell shows up at the palace weeks after the war ended.

It's impossible. But here he is. Vivi throws her arms around him and believes in every impossible dream she ever dreamed.

* * *

 _A/N: Just 1 chapter left to go! This wasn't intended to be such a longwinded angstfest, but I'm pretty happy with how it's turning out. Reviews are much appreciated! ;)_


	6. And One Who Loves Her Back

Like everyone else in the world, Kohza was raised on stories.

At first, it's all the stories about selfless heroes and brave sacrifices that save the world. Kings and princes are the most heroic, and Kohza declares at the age of three that he will grow up to be a prince. His parents laugh at him and explain that he cannot be. A prince must be born to a king, after all, and Kohza's parents are not kings. So he asks who Alabasta's prince is, only to be told that there is none, and will be none. Their king only has a daughter, and his wife is dead.

Kohza expresses confusion. Princesses are useless. He knows this. Princesses have to be rescued by princes or heroes, and their kingdoms suffer in the meantime. How will Alabasta survive without a prince?

Perplexed, his parents explain that this is not how the world works. They try to explain, but it's complicated. They're talking about responsibility and compassion, but they teach Kohza these values, too. He doesn't understand what's supposed to be different between himself and his _princess_.

His mother tries to introduce him to some of the stories she grew up with, but Kohza isn't interested. If there is a princess, if there is a kiss, if there is any mention of _true love_ , he loses interest and makes his feelings known by gagging loudly.

Kisses are gross, love is stupid, and princesses are the stupidest thing of all. As he grows, he realizes how heartless these stories are that focus on the love of the princess and reduce her people to a few lines.

Kohza resolves that when he grows up and Alabasta has a time of crisis, he will save the country and its people—not its princess.

When he's six, he meets her.

Vivi is _all wrong_. She isn't soft, or gentle or beautiful or kind.

She calls Kohza a crybaby after he makes an appeal to the king on the behalf of the people of his village. Kohza has done a brave and important thing, and she _makes fun of him_. Next thing he knows, they're on the floor in a flurry of punches until they're both bruised and bleeding.

There's nothing elegant or graceful about her like the stories said there would be.

She's just like him, Kohza realizes then. She's just another person. A title is just a title. And this girl is Vivi.

Vivi doesn't have friends their age, so he introduces her to the Sand Sand Clan. She immediately challenges him for leadership. They fight for it, as is custom. Vivi puts up a good fight, and is a generous loser. Kohza makes her the vice-leader, because he likes her and thinks she seems to care about people, too.

Kohza's friendship with Vivi opens doors to him that he never imagined. He asks for swordsmanship training, and Chaka himself teaches him. When Vivi talks to him about the things she is learning, Kohza starts to feel left behind—she knows so much that he doesn't, and she's a year younger. He barely has to hint at this, and suddenly Vivi is dragging him to one of her lessons with her.

It only takes three lessons for Kohza to understand.

Firstly, though things like responsibility and kindness and compassion and selflessness are lessons that _everyone_ is taught, Vivi is taught these things with especial care because she will someday have the nation on her shoulders.

Secondly, Vivi has a much better education than Kohza himself or anyone else he knows. Now that he's her friend, he has access to some of the education and training she gets. It makes Kohza angry, because Vivi isn't _better_ than anyone else. She is merely the daughter of the most privileged family in the country.

When Kohza lets this grumble slip to Vivi, her eyes widen, and she runs off. A week later, there is a plan to establish and regulate public schools in every town in Alabasta, and every child under the age of 18 is guaranteed an education. Teachers are selected with care, and for towns where there are none, teachers are assigned and transported. There is no compulsory attendance, but the doors are open to all children who wish to learn.

Thirdly, Vivi listens to the stories, too. She probably knows them better than Kohza himself. But she also understands the divide between the stories and reality in a way that Kohza didn't, before now. After he refuses point blank to listen to a story with her, Vivi and Mrs. Terracotta laugh when he tells them about how he despises the stories with princesses.

"Yeah," says Vivi. "There really should be better stories about princesses."

"Kohza," says Mrs. Terracotta gently, "Vivi understands that these are just stories. She knows that she's going to grow up to have to lead the country as its queen. She knows not to wait for some mythical hero or prince to come and save her."

Later, when they are alone, he turns to Vivi and whispers, "If the country is ever in trouble, I'll save the country before I'll save you."

Vivi smiles and tells him that she trusts him, and this makes Kohza feel warmth spreading into his fingertips and toes.

Years later, he will remember this. He will remember, and curse himself for the fool that he is. And Vivi will wrap her arms around him and assure him that he was not wrong. They are young, and united in love for their kingdom before each other. It is years before Kohza learns that the abstract love for his country and the intimate love for his friend and princess are too deeply entangled to fully pull apart.

* * *

Kohza saves Vivi from bandits trying to kidnap her. He wears the scar on his forehead proudly. It's a badge of honor that shows that he's just like the heroes of his favorite tales. So what that he had to rescue a princess to do it? Vivi is a great princess, well worth rescuing. She's just a child now, but so is Kohza. She can grow up into a magnificent ruler, and Kohza believes that she will.

Still, she's already compassionate enough to cry over Kohza and the Sand Sand Clan's willingness to die for her. It warms his heart, and makes him think that he'd die a hundred deaths for her, if he could.

Because she's his princess. And he wants to serve his country.

Love just isn't one of those things that he ever thinks about, so he's extremely slow on the uptake about Pell. He hears about the firework incident, and something feels off. He starts watching Vivi, and notices—she watches Pell when she thinks no one is looking.

They are playing hide-and-seek one day, and Kohza is supposed to be seeking. On a whim, he goes to the courtyard, where he knows Pell and Chaka will be training. It takes him no time at all to find the alcove where Vivi is hiding, watching her guardians so rapturously that she hasn't even noticed Kohza's presence.

He watches her for awhile. He doesn't know why. It's just—he doesn't think he's ever seen her like this. He supposes that she could have Pell, if she wanted. But it wouldn't do the country any good. Vivi is a princess, so when she grows up, she will be more title than person. She knows that. He _knows_ that she knows. She will never be selfish with her affections, but she's a person after all, and her affections are beyond her control. It shouldn't twist his gut into knots, but it does. He supposes it's because he wanted her to be better than the romantic princesses in the stories.

Kohza alerts her to his presence—and that he knows. He offers her a shoulder to cry on.

He ends up crying into her hair, for some reason that he can't explain. When Vivi pulls away, she sees something on his face that makes her face crumble and she pulls him close again. He wants to tell her that it's okay, he's not actually sad, he doesn't know why he's acting like he is.

The words won't come.

They lie to the Sand Sand Clan about where they were, later.

Vivi is good at it, and it makes a chill run down Kohza's spine. Princesses shouldn't be good at lying. They just _shouldn't_. People should be able to trust them.

When Kohza and his father are sent out to Yuba to develop the oasis into a trade center, it's something of a relief. It's been getting harder and harder to look at Vivi. He doesn't know why, and he's not interested in wondering. Something about the thought frightens him, so he pushes the feeling away, and avoids Vivi a little more everyday.

Kohza leaves her with an order that she's to become a great princess. She nods and smiles. It makes his stomach warm and twist all at once.

* * *

They write letters. Vivi is interested in the people of Yuba, and what Kohza and his father are doing. After he writes a twenty-page tome for her, and she still has more questions, he invites her to visit. It takes months, but she comes—on Pell's back, no less. (Kohza's not sure why that makes his mouth taste vaguely bitter. But she is happy enough to run off with Kohza and leave Pell behind, and that makes him feel better.)

After that, Vivi comes once every half year. She comes to see Yuba, and she talks to everyone, but Kohza is always her guide. She starts out calling him _Leader_ as she did in Alubarna, but gradually shifts to _Kohza_ as time goes by.

He doesn't quite live for her visits, but by the time he's thirteen, it's a near thing. He's working and improving Yuba, and always on his mind is the thought, _I can't wait for Vivi to see this_.

The drought starts. The sandstorms come. The letters tide Kohza over as much as the water, and he's grateful that Vivi wants to visit, but even more grateful that she cannot. It's doing strange things to people the fear of losing water, and he doesn't like the thought of Vivi here. It makes him think of the bandits, and ice goes down his spine.

Then, one day, Vivi writes, _I'd bring you all our water if I could_.

And it makes Kohza's stomach turn. This is what they always said she _wouldn't_ become. This is what a princess in a story would do: put her friends before others.

So he admonishes her, harshly.

She never writes to him again.

Kohza keeps writing, for a time. He can't quite apologize for the sentiment, but he apologizes for the way he said things. He tries to recapture her interest by talking about his most recent projects for Yuba.

But the silence goes on, and the life goes out of Kohza's work. He takes a look around, and realizes that maybe he was doing things for all the wrong reasons: loyalty to Vivi rather than loyalty to Alabasta.

Kohza's father will hear no ill spoken of King Cobra or Princess Vivi, but Kohza begins to wonder. All of Alabasta is in drought except Alubarna. It sounds like something out of a story, and most are happy to believe that it is. But Kohza is well-accustomed to seeing the divides between reality and stories, now, and he knows that this is too good to be true. There is no evidence, but there's only one scientific explanation for this pattern of drought. He doesn't want to believe it, but then again, why? Vivi doesn't write to him anymore, and her visits have stopped. Why, if not because of a guilty conscience?

Kohza is fourteen when he wakes up in the night gasping to wet sheets and a rapidly fading dream. He tries to wipe the memory away, but he still feels the soft blue hair, and the smooth, pale skin like it was real. The soiled sheets aren't near as much a source of shame as the person who dominates his fantasies. This wasn't supposed to happen. He didn't want any of this. He wanted to love his country first, not his princess. He didn't want to be like one of the fools in the stories. He still wants to be better than them.

So he overcorrects.

The drought kills his mother, and that same day, Kohza joins the rebel army.

His father's eyes are torture, now: they reflect only sorrow or anger at Kohza.

So Kohza stays out as much as possible, helping people on behalf of the rebels. They're not militant. They're not violent without cause. They're helping to save people. And Kohza wants to be a part of this.

Vivi shows up out of nowhere when Kohza is fifteen.

Later, he won't be able to remember quite what they say—it's all a blur in the shock of seeing her again, the way she makes his heart pound in his ears like none of his dreams could match. He will remember that she is very enthusiastic when she throws herself at him, and well—it's not like Kohza is the best at self-control either.

He will remember the feeling of her skin in his hands, the way her mouth feels against his, the way her hair feels in his fingers. The way they fit together when they fall asleep. He remembers the gap between them the morning after, and the knowledge that one touch—just one touch—and he'd never be able to leave her again. She keeps that gap open, like she knows.

She leaves the next morning, and that evening, there's an announcement that the princess and the captain of the guard have gone missing.

Kohza lies in bed every night afterwards for months and wonders. On his darker, angrier nights, he tries to believe that she was fleeing the country for her own personal safety, abandoning the people that she was supposed to care about above all else. She is—was?—human enough to pine after Pell, after all. It should be plausible.

Some days, he can almost believe it—but it never quite rings true. Not the Vivi that Kohza knew. Not the Vivi that he held in his arms that one night. Sure, they hadn't talked in two years and so much changed in that time—but he still _knows_ her.

Time passes, and certainty grows in Kohza's heart. Vivi came to him for strength. She knew that something was going to happen to her, and their night together was her swan song.

The nights grow drier. Yuba is dead. So is Kohza's trust in the king. He did something to Vivi, Kohza is sure. Vivi stopped writing because she was forced to do so. She was so kind, so pure—all an inconvenience to Cobra's schemes. He tried to keep her locked away, and finally decided to—

What?

Kill his own daughter? Sell her into slavery?

Kohza doesn't know. All he knows is that this is better reason than any to despise Cobra. No longer is there a conflict between princess or country. (And now that it's gone, he feels how deeply that conflict was eating away at him.) Now he only does what is best for the people of this pathetic country, and doesn't let himself think about Vivi or vengeance.

Eventually, he sleeps with someone else. She's twenty, and knows what she's doing. She chastises him, guides him, and shows him what to do. Kohza's face flames, and he thinks of Vivi the whole time. He realizes two things, that night. One, that Vivi probably experienced no pleasure—he only took and gave nothing back. Two, that he loved her with all his heart—maybe he still does—and most of his pleasure came from that love.

He supposes he's always known it, though he never had the words to put to it. But it's too late, now.

Pathetically, the word helps the feeling bloom. Kohza falls deeper and deeper in love with the memory of a girl who's long gone, and he doesn't know how to make it stop.

* * *

Kohza speaks to Vivi a grand total of twice on the day of the civil war. There is no reunion moment; no time to affirm that she is alive and well, contrary to Kohza's fears—no time to ask her where she's been all these years.

Once on the palace grounds, when he sees a sight so chilling that he thought he might be living a nightmare, and instinctively turns to Vivi—he doesn't even have the capacity to be shocked to see her there—to tell him the truth. She does more than that. She schools him when he gets emotional and loses his head. She grabs him, tackles him to the ground and shouts reason in his face until he yields.

He is reminded that this girl—woman, now—is a force to be reckoned with. No—she's a force of nature.

She calls him _Leader_ , like she did when they were children. He remembers her touch, her skin, and his selfish pleasure, and the shame that came years later. She wants to erase that night, that connection, and he will comply. They were teenagers, and they were foolish. He took from her and gave nothing back. It's understandable that she'd want to rewind and erase that part and go back to the days when it was simple.

Except Kohza now understands that it was never simple. Not for him.

They come up with a plan. It ends with Kohza shot in the back. As he goes down, he thinks he hears Vivi scream his name: _Kohza_.

He's not sure, though. He blacks out for a moment, and when he struggles back to consciousness, war is being waged all around him.

Kohza looks to the palace walls. He knows his gaze is being drawn to where he saw Vivi last—he needs to know that she, at least, is okay.

She isn't. Crocodile has her dangled over the edge.

He drops her.

Kohza's blood turns to ice and he claws at the ground. His body won't move, but Vivi is going to be _dead_ in a moment if he can't catch her—

He relaxes when he sees the falcon in the sky. But it's not Pell who catches her. It's a man on his back, someone Vivi curls into with a comfortable familiarity that's more than just relief that she's been rescued. It's complete trust, in a way that no wise ruler should ever trust anybody.

He judges her for that trust—for loving someone so utterly in a way that no princess or queen ever should.

But she is safe, and he blacks out again. He is in and out of consciousness. He wakes to some of the rebels moving him. It's a miracle that he hasn't been trampled already. He tries to explain to them why the fighting must stop, but it comes out garbled.

He keeps trying.

But it's Vivi who reaches her people, in the end. The rain falls, and Vivi's voice resounds through the square, begging them to stop fighting. _The nightmare is over_ , she declares.

The voices of dissent rise, and it's Kohza's role to try to explain what he knows—what he's learned too late. Igaram shows up too, with a child with a story that corroborates the truth.

The people listen to the story in dawning horror.

And it's King Cobra who speaks to the people's hearts: who offers forgiveness and absolution to all, and hope for the future.

The second time Kohza speaks to Vivi that day, he's on a stretcher and her eyes and fingers are dancing over him restlessly. Her words are a jumble of worry for him, and his father.

It's her restlessness that settles Kohza. He reassures her.

For some reason, he expects to see her in the hospital, but he never does. Igaram shows up that evening, checking on Kohza on Vivi's behalf. Vivi, he explains in a whisper, is looking after Luffy: the pirate captain who defeated Crocodile. He also impresses on Kohza that this must remain secret.

Kohza thinks of the man who caught Vivi as she fell. The way she looked at him—well, the way she used to look at Pell can't hold a candle to that.

"He's a remarkable young man," says Igaram about this Luffy.

Kohza has a tendency toward anger, and now he learns there is jealousy there, too. It burns in his chest, makes his skin itch. He knows he's not good enough for her. He thinks of the night he and Vivi had—the way she said It's okay, I'm ready, and he blindly believed her. The way his greed for her ruled over his compassion. Of course she would want to erase that. Who wouldn't?

"Tell me about them," Kohza says.

Igaram tells of a remarkable man who fell at Crocodile's hands twice, and still got up again to fight. Not because he cared about Alabasta at all, but because Vivi cared about Alabasta, and Vivi was his crew. It seems like something out of a fairy story. In true fairy story tradition, Alabasta was saved by heroes who came for love of its princess.

And Kohza was not one of those heroes. He was a puppet of the villain, poised to tear apart that which he claimed to hold dear. It makes him sick to his stomach.

The day after the war, he sneaks out of the hospital (it's not hard, as busy as it is) and walks up to the front of the palace—but can't bring himself to go in.

A man in a suit comes up to him. He has blond hair that obscures one eye, a curly eyebrow, and a lit cigarette in his hand.

"Can I help you?" he asks.

"You're not a member of the royal household," says Kohza carefully.

"No," grins the man. "I'm a friend of Vivi's. And I know who _you_ are."

Kohza furrows his brow. He's not sure what to say to that.

"I won't pretend to know anything about this country or what you've gone through. And Vivi certainly never spoke about you except to say that you were leading the rebel army. But I'm not blind—you were a friend of hers, weren't you?"

Kohza stares. He's not sure what he can do except to nod.

"So explain this to me," says the man, voice low and dangerous. "How could you let her end up alone? How could you abandon her and believe the worst, if you were her friend?"

Kohza's face flames. "Look, I don't know what you think you know, but _the evidence-_ "

The man waves him off. "I've heard about that _evidence_. We've known Vivi for less than a month, and we know she'd never condone something like that."

Less than a month? But she's been missing for two years. Kohza's head spins.

The man sighs. "Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to blame you. But, sorry, it probably came off that way. I only want to try to understand—how does someone like Vivi end up so alone? How does someone that selfless and that giving end up alone in enemy hands, while her _friends_ are ready to murder her _family_? What, didn't you trust her? Didn't you talk to her? Didn't anyone…"

He says he doesn't mean to blame, but it certainly feels like blame. The man has trailed off, breathing hard, his eyes fixed on Kohza's. But the worst part is that he's right.

Kohza thinks about the girl he grew up with, and wonders at himself, too.

"Explain it to me," the man finishes quietly, dangerously.

"What's to explain?" says Kohza quietly. "Circumstances made things seem clear. We were wrong."

The man's eyes narrow at him, and for a moment, Kohza thinks he'll get punched in the face. He almost hopes he is—it would help, he thinks.

But the man sighs and extinguishes his cigarette.

"Whatever. The past is in the past. But know that if you hurt Vivi again, you'll have the crew of the pirate king to content with, next time we come through."

Kohza believes every word of that, and it makes him feel even more bitter and angry. He leaves without going into the palace. He doesn't have anything he could say to Vivi or her father—anything he could offer up to them, except actions and proof of penance.

Two days after the war, against doctor's orders, he departs for Yuba.

There's a lot to do, rebuilding Yuba. Alubarna has their work cut out for them too, he knows. He gets regular electric snail calls and video snail calls from former rebellion members there.

"I'm not your leader anymore," he thinks, but he doesn't say it. They are all together in guilt. They're not turning to him to lead them, but to have someone to talk to who won't judge them for their mistakes. In his more cynical moments, he wonders how many of them talk to him because they think he's more to blame than themselves, and they feel their guilt can be alleviated by talking to him.

As it turns out, Toto met Vivi and her pirates. He, too, sings the praises of this Luffy.

Kohza has a moment where he considers hiding how little he knows of Vivi's life in the past few years. But pride and anger are what put him at the head of the army that nearly brought his beloved country to ruin. So he swallows his pride and asks his father where Vivi was.

It's for nothing. Toto doesn't know. But he speaks anyway: of the sorrow in Vivi's eyes. Of the way she assured him that she would end the war with a smile that looked like a mask on the verge of shattering. Of the way that only the pirate crew's careless antics could get a genuine tired smile out of her.

Toto makes a joke about Vivi eloping with her pirate captain. Kohza slams down the hammer so hard that he splits the plank he was supposed to be fixing in place. Toto's eyebrows rise into his hairline, but he doesn't comment. He also makes no further comments about Vivi and Luffy's hypothetical relationship.

Vivi's belated coming-of-age ceremony is held less than a week after the war, and her speech is broadcast nationwide. Kohza listens from his bed, and it dawns on him that this is not a speech being delivered only to her people. She is also speaking to her pirates—to her pirate captain?—and explaining why she must stay.

Because she loves her country, she says.

Of course she does. She's staying.

She's _staying_.

* * *

Kohza has always understood the difference between personal feelings and responsibility.

It would have been hard not to, because all his life, knowingly or not, he's been in love with his princess. All his life, he's reminded himself that loving someone doesn't make them right; and it _definitely_ doesn't make their family right.

He realizes now that he started overcorrecting, somewhere along the way.

He can't remember when he fell for her. That used to bother him, when he was sixteen and thought she was lost for good. He wanted a moment to label as _The Beginning_ , a clear point to start the story. But that wasn't really what he was searching for. He was searching for a clear starting point, because what has a clear starting point _must_ have a clear end point.

He wanted to know that somewhere ahead in this long, miserable road, there would be a point where his feelings for Vivi would come to an end, and life could go on.

He doesn't wonder anymore.

Kohza fell for Vivi naturally and deeply, like an inevitability. He wouldn't be surprised if the feelings never go away.

At least now, he knows she's alive and well and will one day be his queen in Alubarna. He no longer has to live with love for a woman that might be dead. He no longer debates what he would do if he were torn between queen and country. He knows, now, that it's the same thing. Vivi is the greatest gift that Alabasta will ever receive. He erred once, by not trusting her. He won't make that mistake again.

But maybe it's a moot point, because they live separate lives, now. They've seen each other on two occasions in the last five years. They're not what they used to be: he's her loyal subject and she's his queen-to-be, and that's for the best.

* * *

Vivi comes to Yuba a month after the war.

Kohza keeps his distance. There's still much work to be done, and he doesn't want to interfere. She wants to see the oasis that was and will again be so crucial for trade in her kingdom. Kohza is just a person in town. He practically hides himself, working on rebuilding one of the residences on the outskirts that doesn't need repairs urgently by any means. It's abandoned—it's been abandoned for years.

It's where Kohza spent that one night with Vivi.

"Is this a test?" says Vivi's voice at sundown. Kohza's body goes rigid.

"What?" He slowly turns to face her.

"This," says Vivi, waving at the building as she walks up to him. She was bruised and bloody, last time he saw her. Now—she's elegant, regal and graceful. Everything the stories said she should be. Everything he thought as a shortsighted child that she would never be. She takes his breath away, because she is beautiful, because she has come to look for him, and because she trusts him enough to be alone with him.

He would have berated her for it, once upon a time. He knows better, now. Between the two of them, she's the expert on how to trust and love. Vivi's trust and love saved the country after Kohza's cynicism almost tore it down.

"How would it be a test?"

"Well, you didn't come out to greet me. You weren't anywhere in town. But you're here—what am I supposed to think?"

"You can think whatever you like," says Kohza, and hates how cold he sounds. He's all fire and heat, inside. But he doesn't know how to express that in moderation. If he lets go, he'll be crazy.

He will _want_.

And it will hurt, because Vivi—

Vivi is everything he can't have. For his own good. For her own good. For the good of the country.

For all of the reasons.

"Kohza," says Vivi, stepping even closer and taking his face in her hands so that he looks her in the eye. "I owe you an apology. It's been eating away at me these past two years."

This gives Kohza pause.

"What? Why would you owe _me_ an apology?"

"I wasn't entirely honest with you. I came here on my way out of Alabasta. I came to you because—I told myself I was leaving my heart with you, for safekeeping. But I wasn't. I was just taking from you so that I'd have the strength to know that there was a time when I loved, and was loved. So I wouldn't lose myself."

Kohza stares at her. He can't help it.

"What are you talking about? It was—I was _awful_ ," he says. He means this on more than one level.

She laughs at him, and he wonders how many levels she perceives. "That part didn't matter. I loved you and you loved me, and I knew it with every fiber in my body, then."

It could be just the most obvious level that she sees. It could be all of them, to the deepest, darkest corner of Kohza's heart. He wants to believe that she does see him, does see that deep.

"Can I hug you?" he asks, though that isn't what he meant to say.

"Of course," she says, and he pulls her to him. Her arms wrap around his shoulders, and one hand strokes up and down his back while the other holds his head into her shoulder, fingers rubbing slow circles into his scalp.

He's never felt as at home as he does right here, right now.

"I thought you were dead," he whispers to her, and he doesn't care that it comes out broken. She pauses— _surprise? Realization? What is this?_ —then holds him tighter.

"I'm not," she says instead. She's quiet. Gentle. Everything he needs, and everything he didn't give her credit for all these years.

Why was that? He looks back now, and sees himself through new eyes. He was selfish, always thinking of himself. Never self-reflecting, never truly reflecting on Vivi as a person. He judged her, all their lives. He thought he was serving his country. He thought he was helping Vivi see what she couldn't see herself.

But he sees now, she always already knew what was important better than he did.

He complained about Vivi's privileged education, and she moved to make education available for everyone.

He watched her heart break, and she did nothing but take the comfort that he offered—and even try to comfort him in return for a heartbreak he couldn't even put words to yet.

He told her he'd choose their country over her, and she smiled and said she trusted him.

He told her to become a great princess, and she smiled and said she would.

He told her about Yuba, and she replied with thoughtful questions, unafraid to admit what she didn't know.

He told her to visit Yuba, and she did, displaying interest and compassion for everyone she met.

He berated her for expressing favor in a letter once, and she—of course, she stopped writing to punish herself for this transgression of loving him a little too much.

She came to him for strength, and went off to do…Kohza didn't even know _what_ for two years to save her country. Meanwhile, Kohza led the army that threatened everything that they both held dear.

Vivi was always the wise one, and it's taken him this long to see that. Kohza judged and berated without ever looking inward. If he had, he would have seen—

 _What would Vivi do?_

This is the question that Kohza asks himself now. The question that he's been asking himself for a month, every time he feels he might be swept away by guilt and grief. He will never make amends if he lets those things sweep him away, and he knows, now—he should have been looking to Vivi for guidance all along.

So he does now, even if it's just in his mind, and knows he has to ask the question he fears the most.

"Will you tell me about where you went?" he asks her, a mere whisper.

"It's a long story," she says, stroking his hair. Her voice is even and quiet and soothing.

"I have time."

"It might take all night."

"I have time."

They move into the ruins of the abandoned house. The dining room and kitchen are a mess of sand and broken wood threatening splinters and worse, so they step into the living room. There's no roof over either of these rooms, but it's safer than the bedroom, where the roof might collapse at any moment. The living room was clear of furniture to begin with, only containing a rug. Now it's a bed of sand. They sit in the sand.

They could just as well do this outside, Kohza reflects, but the visage of privacy is not meaningless. His chest tightens as he imagines what story Vivi might tell him. He has to pull his mind back from the dark corners—here, at last, he gets to let go of the nightmares. Here, at last, he gets to learn the truth.

Vivi is slow to start. It's stop and go, her story somewhat disjointed. She jumps around in time, and Kohza is confused by the flurry of Alabasta-Igaram-Jaya-Nefertiti-Igarappoi-Baroque Works and he doesn't know what half of those names mean.

He doesn't interrupt. Vivi has never told this story before—that much is apparent. He has to give her the space to figure out how she wants to tell it.

Kohza now knows about Baroque Works—heard Igaram's story that day after the civil war with everybody else—that story gave no hint of what Igaram and Vivi were doing. The more he listens to these confused, disjointed pieces, the more he realizes—

For two years, he imagined Vivi had been sold, or killed by her father. He was relieved to find that this wasn't true.

Since the war, he imagined that Vivi and Igaram were off at sea, playing detective in some way. He imagined that it was risky, but—

But the story that's starting to form in Kohza's head now—

"Vivi," he interrupts. "You-" he has to clear his throat here "-are you saying that you left Alabasta to try to go undercover in Baroque Works?"

She blinks at him. Her eyes are nothing like they were outside, moments ago. These eyes are hollow, haunted. She's not all here anymore. The story is carrying her away.

"Yes."

"But first you needed to become—the sort of people that Baroque Works might recruit?"

"Yes."

"So—so Nefertiti was your cover?" he guesses, because she's been talking about _me_ and _Nefertiti_ like they're different people, but there's no one else that that could be. Nefertiti was the queen of Alabasta who abolished slavery 500 years ago, and Vivi always said that she wanted to be a queen like Nefertiti.

"She was," says Vivi. "And she murdered and robbed and lied and used everyone she knew. She didn't, when she could avoid it, but it wasn't always avoidable." A beat. "It was _usually_ unavoidable."

"Start from the beginning," Kohza whispers. "Help me understand."

So she goes back to the beginning, and this time it's more streamlined.

Jaya. Bounty hunting as Nefertiti, Igaram as Igarappoi. The games they played—pretending to be rivals, or occasionally that Igarappoi was Nefertiti's sugar daddy. The recruitment offer from Baroque Works, and how it nearly all went sideways because they didn't want to seem too eager.

King.

A light comes to Vivi's eyes when she mentions meeting her partner in Baroque Works. There's an unmistakable softness in the way she talks about this character. This isn't merely someone Nefertiti pretended to care for—this is someone Vivi cared for.

An agent in an organization that was trying to bring down her country. His country. Their country.

Kohza cannot understand this affection, and he has to drag his consciousness back to her story, because missing a single word is inexcusable.

Once she joins Baroque Works, her story stops having such a clear divide between Nefertiti and Vivi. Suddenly, it's _me_ more often than not. Or maybe that's because at some point, Kohza's reached out to place his hand over hers. Maybe he's grounded her a little, brought her back in some small way. But her story is no lighter than it was before. If anything, it's darker.

She says, "I learned to trust King," and Kohza cannot understand.

She says, "I killed an Alabastan," and Kohza wants to cry for her, because she could have pointed out that he was a criminal, which is apparent to Kohza from the context, but she doesn't do that.

She says, "Igaram and I saw Crocodile through the window, and we knew," and Kohza is frightened—because surely this is where Crocodile starts to come after her?

She says, "And that's where I met the Straw Hats," and Kohza is relieved. The worst is over at last.

But the story goes on.

She watches King die. She watches Igaram's partner Bella die. She watches Igaram himself die—or so she thinks for the longest time, and he can see that even though she knows he didn't die, now, the grief still has a grip on her.

She arrives in Alabasta. She wants to seek out Kohza and the rebel army, but goes to Yuba. Vivi wants to come back down to Katorea, but her companions suggest that they should seek out Crocodile instead.

The Straw Hats give and give and give, and they and their animal friends manage to get her to Alubarna just before the war starts. They split up, the Straw Hats distracting Baroque Works while Vivi goes to try to stop the rebel army.

And Kohza knows how this goes. He remembers that moment.

 _Did you see a person standing there?_

 _What? No._

He remembers a moment when he thought he heard a voice calling his name. He thought—

Kohza listens as he and his army nearly trample Vivi to death. He listens as they tear her city to pieces, as Vivi and her friends desperately fight the true enemy alone.

The story comes to an end when Vivi and Kohza reunite at the palace.

"You know the rest," she says quietly, collapsing backwards to lie down in the sand. Kohza follows suit. She's looking up at the sky, and he's looking at her, so he's the only one who knows—

Her face is dry. Kohza's is not.

"Vivi," he says. "I'm so sorry."

Vivi smiles at the stars in the sky. "It's not your fault. None of it was your fault any more than it was my father's."

He reaches out, touches her face—just one finger tracing her jawline. She turns her face to his. Her eyes turn soft, and she raises her hands to Kohza's cheeks again, and wipes his tears away with her thumbs.

In the stories, the princess always has to be rescued. And sure, Vivi had been rescued by the Straw Hats and their numerous friends and allies, human and animal alike. But—

Vivi gave everything she had to save her people. There's nothing she hasn't given up for them. The Straw Hats didn't save Alabasta because they wanted anything from Vivi. They saved Alabasta because they love Vivi, and Vivi loves Alabasta.

And Vivi—

She loves so much.

She loves _so much_.

She loves everyone from people who should be her enemies to people she hasn't seen in years. She loves people she's never met, and people she sees all the time.

And they all love her back.

Kohza knows. He always thought love was stupid and it's taken him too long to realize its value. There's only one person he loves in that absolute, unconditional way that Vivi loves, and that person is Vivi herself.

He's never loved anyone else like this, and he thinks now that he never will.

The tears have stopped, but Vivi is still stroking his face, gazing at him like she's trying to memorize every line and contour so she'll never forget. Kohza reaches up, catching her hands in his. He interlaces their fingers.

"I love you," he says quietly. "I've always loved you, and I always will. And I'll never doubt you again."

"Kohza," says Vivi, blinking at him. Emotions dance across her face too fast for Kohza to pinpoint, but they settle on something like wonder, and he can't believe that this is a surprise to her. It's unacceptable that Vivi can't take Kohza's love for granted. So he says it again.

" _I love you_."

"You can't promise forever," she says, wide-eyed.

"Normally, I'd agree," says Kohza. "But you—Vivi, you're everywhere. In everything I've ever-" _done_ , he can't say, because he can't bear to implicate her in the terrible mistake he made that killed thousands of her people.

"Tell me," says Vivi quietly, squeezing his hands. "Tell me your story."

There isn't much to tell, but Kohza tries his best. He tells her about the drought killing his mother, even though he knows she already knows. He tells her about the efforts he tried to make in the rebel army.

He tells her everything, mistakes and all. He tells her the things he imagined her father capable of.

She told him everything, so he owes her this much, at the very least.

Still, he ends as they decide to march on Alubarna. The rest is too painful, and she knows it all anyway.

Except—

"I saw you," he croaks, and covers his eyes because he thinks he might cry again. "I saw you there. I didn't know it was you, but I saw—someone—and I—I thought it was my imagination."

"It's okay," she says, like he and his army didn't practically kill her.

He thinks back to meeting her in that garden. She was bruised and battered and looked like hell. All of that had been the doing of _Kohza's army_.

"It's really not," he says.

"It was Baroque Works," she insists. "They were doing everything they could to make sure I couldn't talk to you. They knew we knew each other, they knew if we met—"

 _If we met_.

What would have happened, if they'd managed to meet before the war? Would Kohza have listened? He tells her his doubts.

"Do you think you'd have ignored me?" she asks.

"I don't know," he says. "I'm afraid I would have."

She's quiet for a moment.

"In the palace gardens," she says, quietly. "You took one look, and you _knew_. You turned to me, and you _asked_. When I told you not to act rashly, you _listened_. I don't know what you would have done if things had been different, but Kohza—you say you doubted me, but that was what the enemy was trying to do. And you gave me all your trust when it mattered."

He shifts closer. Releases one of her hands to trace his up her arm and to her shoulder. She puts that hand to his waist and uses it to pull herself closer, so that there's almost no space between them.

"I always assumed you thought the worst of me," says Vivi. "I thought you'd think I ran away to save myself."

"I could never believe that," says Kohza roughly. "I know you, and—even though I hate that I didn't trust you more than I did, I…"

"I love you," she says earnestly, and Kohza already knows this, but the way she says it sinks deep into his soul anyway. "I love you so much. I love you and I love that you love our country, and I can promise you that I will always come back to you, because I've never stopped loving anyone, and I've never loved anyone more than I love you."

Kohza smiles. Rests his forehead against hers.

"Does that mean you still love Pell?" he teases.

"Of course," laughs Vivi. "But it doesn't hurt anymore."

"Did King hurt?" asks Kohza, serious.

Vivi's face sobers and she looks at him for a long moment before she smiles again. This is a more somber smile.

"It hurt that I always had to lie to him. It hurt for a little while that Nami would never see me the way I saw her. It hurt to let the Straw Hats leave without me."

"But you still love them all."

"I do, with all my heart," she smiles. "The pain of those loves is in the past."

"Did I hurt?" Kohza asks, voice barely more than a whisper, because he's daring to think that he belongs in this pantheon of the greatest loves in Vivi's life.

"You hurt most of all," says Vivi, earnest and vulnerable, and Kohza's heart contracts and expands.

He kisses her on the tip of the nose.

"Do I still hurt?"

"I sometimes think you always will," says Vivi, eyes wet.

"I don't want to hurt you," says Kohza, and his voice comes out sounding as broken as Vivi's face looks.

"Don't I hurt you?" asks Vivi, and Kohza blinks.

He thinks of how she will never truly be his—will always belong first and foremost to thousands or millions of other people. He thinks of how she will never ask more of him than he can give her. He thinks of how she has come to seek him out to confide in him and offer absolution, but will be gone in the morning.

"Only when we're apart," says Kohza.

"That's most of the time, then."

"I guess so."

"Kohza," Vivi whispers, and her cheeks are red now. "We're still too far apart for me."

So Kohza winds an arm around her back and pulls her flush against him, slipping his other arm under her head. They curl up in the sand the way they did that one night they had together, and they fit together even better than they did in his memory.

Vivi throws a leg over his, pulling him even closer like this is a necessity.

She tucks her face into his chest, and demands, "Tighter," and so Kohza complies.

They stay like that through the cold desert night.

He doesn't know if Vivi sleeps. Kohza doesn't, because this time with her is too precious to give a single moment up for sleep.

* * *

Early the next morning, they're interrupted by Pell, who's come searching for Vivi from the sky. Kohza sits up and pulls Vivi up with him when Pell lands beside them, but they don't release each other.

Kohza braces himself for a lecture, arm reflexively tightening around Vivi, but none comes.

"It's time to go, Princess," says Pell.

"Just one moment," says Vivi, and turns to Kohza.

Her eyes are droopy, and she's already half-straddling him because of how they were lying. She shifts just a bit, so she's straddling his lap properly, and kisses him.

He kisses her back.

They kiss for a small eternity.


End file.
